GILBERT GOODMATE AND THE MUSHROOM OF PHUNGORIA

Brief Review by Madeleine Williams

Once any vital patches had been developed and applied - this game looked set
to become a very enjoyable experience for those adventure game players
amongst us who really appreciate that "traditional" style.

Although not a very long game, I have to admit I did enjoy it very much and
hope Prelusion will carry on the good work and give us more !!

I enjoy "cartoony" style graphics so no moans there from me - I found the
Gilbert graphics to be bright and clear - and I didn't experience any mad
pixel hunts either, so again, no moans.
The music was rather repetetive though and I think that could be improved on
in Prelusion's next production.

The voice acting was generally good, although it WAS fairly
obvious that the same "voices" were portraying more than one character.
And I do think the game was a trifle "dialogue heavy" and the dialogue
itself rather "corny" in parts.
Given the option, I would have definitely "skipped" through some of the more
mundane conversations. Especially as they were not necessary to the plot.
[I certainly "yawned" my way through some of them.]

I had fun solving most of the puzzles and only considered one or two to be
rather far fetched. But as traditional adventure games do tend to
incorporate mind stretchingly, offbeat situations..... far fetched solutions
are only to be expected :-)

All things considered though, I found Gilbert Goodmate to be well worth the
purchase
price and I am looking forward to pointing and clicking my way through
another Prelusion adventure.
Perhaps they'll give us a longer one, next time, too !!

Congratulations on a very good Review.

I don't go along with every word written, but IMHO a very fair and balanced assessment.

One of my chief criticisms is the overwhelming amount of dialog(s). I think Madeleine was being rather 'kind' there!

But overall I certainly enjoyed the game immensely!

Madeleine. I agree with LenG that you did a great job with reviewing GG.

I have just barely started the game and am considering re-installing without the patch. I think the issue the patch is for IS not a problem with my configuration and the patch itself is giving me new problems.

I would advise if you don't have a GForce card trying the game without the patch first.

Laura

Laura

Hope you get this 'in time'.

Unless you're having REAL troubles I advise NOT removing the patch ... i.e. the FIRST patch which changes the game from V 1.00 to V 1.02.

This patch hardly addresses tech issues but
(A) Increases Gilbert's walking speed by about 40%.
(B) Cuts out a little of the superfluous dialog in the 1st 1/2 ... still leaves too much in IMO!
(C) Eliminates 2 or 3 or so gameplay bugs.

P.S.
If you've got enough Hard disk space (about 1 GB), FULL install makes EVERYTHING go much quicker & smoother!!

[This message has been edited by LenG (edited 06-26-2001).]

What are the "2 or 3 gameplay bugs" that the second patch eliminates? I played the game both patched and unpatched. I actually preferred it unpatched because one of the dialogs the patch eliminated was one of the ones I liked. The gameplay was the same.

I played it on an older computer -

AMD K-6 233 MHz
64 MB RAM
Matrox Mystique video card 2 MB
AWE 64 Gold
Win 98 FE

There were some areas where the cursor would go really slow and jerky - especially during conversations. This happened both with and without the patch. I attributed it to playing on a computer that was above minimum, but below recommended specs. The sound usually wasn't smooth during screen transitions, which I again attribute to the specs of the computer I used.

I liked the music, but the music for around town was all the same except for the dock area and inside the houses and it got old. The map music was very similar. I had to spend a lot of time out in the street talking to people and listening to that same music got pretty tiresome. Maybe next game they can put different music for the different street views. I did like the music in the game, but almost anything will get monotonous when you hear it too often.

The part of the game I didn't like was the Viking village. A similar event took place in Day of the Tentacle, and it worked OK in Day of the Tentacle. But that scenario just seemed out of place in Gilbert. That's only my opinion though.

Some of the conversations got a bit long, especially when I was replaying the game. It wasn't the actual length of the conversation topics so much as the corny one-liner type jokes. There were just so many of them. The funniest parts of the game were not the one-liners.

Overall I enjoyed the game. I liked the music (except for the parts that got too repetitive) and most of the voices. The map was beautifully done. I enjoyed seeing the little cannonballs shooting into the water on the map after I'd accomplished a certain task within the game. There's little animations like birds flying and waves moving which I hadn't expected in a 2D game.

People complain about the long conversations. But after playing several games where I mostly just clicked around and any conversations that happened were VERY brief, GG was like a breath of fresh air. So many recent games don't have any real characterizations at all. The characters in Gilbert were (mostly) humorous caricatures, but at least they had some personality, which is missing from a lot of recent games. I was getting tired of games where I didn't really know anything about the main character that I was supposed to be playing.

[This message has been edited by Jenny100 (edited 06-26-2001).]

I just finished playing this on XP with no patch and a full install and I ran into no problems whatsoever.

The characterizations were very well rounded out, I think Jenny100 is right about that being something that's missing in the current games for the most part. Dialogs were long but generally amusing and/or informative - I found I enjoyed them for the most part though I couldn't handle it when I got tired and the humor was quite refreshing to me after playing a number of more current games in a row.

Really enjoyed the overall ambience of the game.

happy trails,

Carolyn

I also enjoyed the game. I thought it was great fun!

Hi

Really sad, isn't it ?? That we can't expect any more Prelusion adventures

Cheers.

Mad

We (my family & I) played Gilbert Goodmate with no patch on winXp and also had no trouble. I agree with Mad's review.

There were quite a few long dialogues, but we enjoyed most of them so that wasn't a bother. (As a matter of fact, many of the best moments were hidden in those long speeches.) We just went along with Gilbert's leisured approach to investigation and had fun with it. Oh that Viking village! I'm sorry you didn't like it Jenny100. We thought the slave competition & a couple of the villagers there were hilarious! I didnt feel any of the game made but so much sense so I didnt worry about the apparant anachronism involved. Definitely agree that you got to know Gilbert better as a character than in many games. That did add to the charm. Don't know abotu youguys but I ended up feeling a little sorry for some of the characters, especially the old sailor & the inventor.

I would love to seen Prelusion make another game like this. Gilbert was a lot of fun!

Susan