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Shadowgate 64: Trials of
the Four Towers

Shadowgate is a 'trying'
experience beyond its four
towers. The full review.

June 9, 1999

One of the selling points of Kemco's
Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four
Towers is its connection to the award
winning Shadowgate of game systems past.
In fact, fans of the original Shadowgates on
the NES and PC will get a great nostalgia
kick from roaming around the old castle
using the N64 controller but anyone
looking for a new adventure that takes full
advantage of the N64's capabilities may be
a little disappointed.

You're cast in the role of Del, a halfling that
finds himself locked up just as the game
begins. Your mission is to escape and
travel around Castle Shadowgate solving
mysteries and puzzles that lead to bigger
and better puzzles and mysteries.
Shadowgate will have a very familiar flavor
to it for anyone that dabbled in the
previous games and you will need all of
those problem solving wits about you to
get through this one as well. We guessed
that there have got to be some parts and
clues from the old games that would help
us get through this version, but since we
sucked so bad at the old NES version we
couldn't tell you which ones those are.

Sharp eyes and a creatively warped mind
will be your best friends as you proceed
through S64. Be prepared to examine
every part of every room right from the get
go, because there will always be something
that'll you'll overlook. It goes without
saying that you pickup anything and
everything that's not tied down or, in a few
cases, magically bound to another object.

Gameplay
The game plays almost exactly like the old
NES version. You spend the majority of
your time walking down hallways and
pathways and advancing to different parts
of the castle once you figure out how in the
hell they come up with such frustrating
obstacles and puzzles. It's a slow moving
first person observer with action and
adventure popping up periodically. At
times Shadowgate64 gets so lonely that we
find ourselves wishing for a Pigcop or even
an Imp, not to kill mind you, but to be
friends with and keep us company.
Anything to break up the monotony of
condemned-castle exploring. What a sad
day it is when you don't feel the urge to
blow away a videogame bad guy.

Reading is an important part of S64. If
you're illiterate or otherwise afraid of the
written word then there's not much for you in this game. The variety of
books, memos and important pieces of paper scattered around the castle
make you wonder why the hell a powerful wizard like Lakmir, the
proprietor of the castle, can't conjure up a maid or something to keep the
place tidy. You will assemble quite a collection of easy to find books that
will give you all kinds of insight into the science, history and politics of the
strange world of Kal Torin. All of this written information will have clues,
some more obvious than others, about how to advance through the
castle.

Next to the books, the odd assortment of items and junk you pick up will
all be used at some point in your adventure. Of course these items may
not be used in the most conventional or obvious manner. A pickaxe,
while normally a pretty useful tool or weapon is also a great way to climb
a wall. Again this is great stuff for Shadowgate/puzzle fans but for the
alien/zombie killer in all of us, it'll seem very strange to have so little
@ss-kicking in this first person 3D world. We're not kidding when we
say that one of the most action packed moments early on in the game
comes when you walk into a room and a giant table tips over onto its
side. Wheeeee.

The puzzles get abstract early on. We like the one where you're faced
with a shelf that has three statue holders. The first two are empty and the
third one has a statue of normal looking man. You check your inventory
(which is so huge, you must be storing this stuff in a parallel universe) and
what's this? You happen to have a statue of both a primitive man and a
an apeman!! "No problem" you think, "I know that theory of evolution
where man descended from apelike creatures so I'll just put 'em in order
in my own little evolutionary model!" You will be flabbergasted to find
out that this is not how it's supposed to be done in this game. As you
curse the game's logic and begin searching for the nearest anthropology
book, you'll realize that this is Shadowgate and the game has it's own
universe of logic that may or may not be the same as that found in our
world. Get used to this. If you like to be intellectually challenged by your
videogames, the Trials of the Four Towers will have you questioning the
value of your education.

Graphics:
Shadowgate 64 has it very easy over some other first person style games
since there are no weapons or gangs of enemies to draw on screen like
you would have in GoldenEye, for example. But the textures on the
walls and doors are simply done and repeat themselves throughout the
levels. Picking up objects leads to a sequence where the object floats
towards you, growing into a giant pixelated object as it gets closer to
you. A little animation here would've helped and it couldn't take much to
have a nice polished object that stays more in focus as it moves. There
are no lighting effects except for an overall darkening of the screen when
you're in a room with poor light.

There are only a few characters to interact with in the game, so it
would've been nice if we could've gotten more animation out of them. A
ghost that really looks creepy and moves like a disembodied spirit,
whatever that would look like, could've been a real boost to the game.
Instead, we have to face minimally animated apparitions that fade in and
out to offer threats and words of warning and advice.

Sound
A nice way to put it would be to say that the game's sound is appropriate
for the game. A meaner, and much more satisfying way would be to say
the sound is as devoid of life as the graphics and gameplay. You will hear
the pitter patter of footsteps and the creak of great old wooden doors as
you open them but after that there's just not to much sound to be heard.
It's not that the sound isn't done well, there just isn't anything in this game
to make cool noises. The jingling of keys or the flapping of pages sound
very accurate but it's not anything that'll make you crank up the stereo
system so you can get the full effect. The background music lends itself to
castle exploring with its whole mystic mandolins and eery lyres. It
changes depending on the section of the castle you're in and it can be a
good way to keep track of where you are since the hallways can get a
little confusing sometimes.

COMMENTS

Shadowgate64 is quite simply Shadowgate for the
N64. It stays very true to the concepts behind the
original games which in this case may be bad thing
because of the breadth of today's videogame
marketplace. Extreme puzzle fans and diehard
Shadowgate fans will love the N64 version of the
classic braintwister, but for the rest of us, RPGs have developed so much
in the last few years that there's no reason to sacrifice action for great
problem solving elements. We can't tell you how frustrating it was having
neither the @ss kicking guns nor worthless bad guys to blow away as we
patrolled the hallways of castle Shadowgate with our controllers set on
Turok-style, perfect for destruction. With the addition of Shadowgate64
to the library, the Big N is still very short on its quota for RPGs.

--Aaron Boulding

This 64-bit update to the classic Shadowgate series
proved to be a little stale for my tastes. But I don't think
the game was lessened so much by its design -- that of
the classic series of games it was inspired by -- but
rather by a sluggish gameplay engine and lack of
environmental variation. Those interested in the title are
likely to know that it primarily requires players to do a lot of exploring
and puzzle-solving, all brought together with a quest-like storyline. The
problem with this game isn't that we're made to do all this exploring, it's
that we're made to go through similar environment after similar
environment. After two hours of searching for clues, every room begins
to look like the next -- every hallway identical to the one before it. The
more of the same that we see, the less interested we become in the whole
adventure.

Puzzles, sometimes scarce, aren't always constructed in a logical manner
and because of that, solving them can sometimes be a lesson in
frustration. And the gameplay engine by which this is all brought to life
on, well, lacks the polish to adequately help convey a dark, magical
dungeon where mysteries lay hidden. Even though the game's
environments are a bit on the generic side in terms of graphic quality,
framerates sometimes stutter a bit anyway -- and this is with a relatively
slow-moving gameplay experience.

At the risk of sounding cliché, "fans of" the Shadowgate series, or those
looking for a deep RPG-like experience, may want to give Shadowgate
64 a try. But if you're expecting a fast-paced adventure with significant
fighting elements and mind-blowing effects, this game probably isn't what
you're hoping it might be.

--Matt Casamassina

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