Road to India
Microids

Here I am again talking about a game most people played already and probably are not interested to read a review about. Never the less I am going to write about the "Road to India" because I have had a very funny experience and it turned out just like this game. But lets put first things first.

This game has all the ingredients of a great game:

1. A meaty story of young lovers, a kidnapped sweetheart, a tragic beauty in bondage to a mad man, a forbidden secret sect operating in stealth and the few helpful rats.

2. Beautiful graphics depicting a mysterious country full of great monuments of love and worship exquisitely rendered so that the rays of the sun sings on the shadows of the stones laced with the artistry of the long dead stone mason's talent. The streets and the alleys are also beautiful and littered with carefully constructed detail.

3. The grandeur comes not only from the monuments but from the overshadowing presence of Kali one of the Hindu religions most misunderstood, most terrible and most marvelous deities. One must read about Kali to truly comprehend her many aspects, her significance in the overall scheme of creation and her importance to the Hindu religion.

The drama here could have been breath taking.

4. There is suspense and there is action and there are a few puzzles.

5. The game is slow to load but there are no glitches and bugs it is smooth from beginning to end, the result of careful programming I am sure.

6. First person, point and click, inventory and a index of important papers and artifacts. The cursor is indicative.

7. The music or chanting is interesting and appropriate.

The game opens with the sweethearts parting at the airport, than a "Dear John" letter comes and our hero Fred is on the "Road to India". He dreams and this first dream is the very best part of the game. The Taj Mahal is gorgeous and very true to life. We meet there beside the villains a monkey with a prehensile tail holding a tile (only South American monkeys have prehensile tails but that is just splitting hairs), and a docile and very obliging elephant.

Fred arrives to India and witnesses the abduction of his fiancée. He sets out to the rescue and encounters a few interesting characters in a curiously empty and clean New Delhi. He collects things but the inventory is never troublesome and things not needed disappear, he does all the right things but somehow the dialogue is flat and at times he almost whines.

Beside the city he visits a few more interesting places like the house the kidnapped women are held and a secret temple of Kali (he offs some somnolent guards at both places), in moments of high tension he embraces his love who is laid out on a sacrificial altar, later he finds himself face to face with the mad man who just like Andy Warhol predicted is having his fifteen minutes (more like seconds) fame and hurts the one he loves (we needed a cliché).

This could have been a very very good game but the mystery was practically non existent, Kali, the terrible, Kali the marvelous, Kali the mother, Kali the avenger was just a vague shadow, the pathos fell flat and the game became a series of interesting pictures, entertaining enough but not what it could have been. It could have been a great game with dark undercurrents, sinister characters contrasting the self sacrifice of a woman who wants life only on her own terms.

While I played the game these were the thoughts that occurred to me and I remembered the cake I was once baking with the very best ingredients and how when it was done it tasted OK but fell flat.

Road to India illustrates what GameBoomers are saying at every opportunity, the story is a very import part of an adventure game.

I played this game on an HP Pentium III Genuintel ~600 MHz processor
128 MB Physical memory
Nvidia Riva TNT/TNT2 Pro video card
Sound Blaster Audi PCI 128 Legacy Drive

Minimum requirements:
Win. 95/98/Me/2000
Processor II 266 Mhz
Video card 2D 8 MB Ram Compatible DirectX 8/Direct3D
64 MB Ram
400 MB free hard disk
CD-Rom 16 speed drove
Sound Card compatible with DirectX 8
Keyboard, mouse

P.S. I liked the rats too.

Hi lasanidine.

Always nice to have more than one opinion of a game - and I enjoyed reading yours

I think I possibly liked Road to India more than you seemed to have - but it can only be good that different people enjoy different stuff ??

[Should help to keep a variety of games in development <img border="0" title="" alt="[Cool]" src="cool.gif" /> ]

[Should !!!!!

Hi Mad thank you for reading my review, but you misunderstood my meanig, I should have made it clear that I liked the game, it was delightful to play, nice graphics, good story line and no bugs.

My point was that it could have been a really great game, all the ingredients were there and I was disappointed that the potential was not explored in a greater detail.

It was a good game, fun to play I could have been a great game if only...

Hi all,

Lasanidine,

I agree with you about this game. It was delightful, different - exotic and unique locale -but could have been one of the great ones. That being said - I also agree with you that I enjoyed the game - thought it was money well worth spent and will keep it in my collection to replay after more time has passed.

I suppose it is a credit to the game that it raised our hopes and expectations for more. Still I rarely have played a good game that I didn't think was too short or could have gone deeper. That is part of what makes it memorable. In this case, the graphics, unique places, plot and puzzles make it a keeper. Still - sigh - like you said it could have been in the top ten. Hey at least it got made, these days that in itself is a wonder.

Laura

For me, it was incredibly difficult to like the game because the main character was (to me) unlikable.I thought there were some nice, easy puzzles, and some interesting graphics, but really did not feel it was worth the price (retail) that I paid. In my opinion, a game that promised much and delivered little.

I just finished this game, after finding it on clearance for only $5.00. I think I would have been really disappointed if I had paid full price for the game. The graphics were beautiful and the story was good, but as the other reviews have said, it didn't go very deeply into the story at all. I found myself wondering if I found everything, and if I explored everything thoroughly because I was left with a feeling of "Is that all?" I didn't expect another TLJ, but I was hoping for a longer, deeper game. I have no room to complain, though, because I paid very little for my game and it was well worth the money I paid. The puzzles were interesting, and I enjoyed the idea of going back and forth into a dreamworld and the fact that he encountered those areas in real life later in the game. I loved the lady who was in the room on the second floor, and I would have liked to have heard more about what happened to her. All in all, I would say it is well worth playing if you can get it at a discount.

I enjoyed the game, but it was just to Short, bottom line.

The game did show up in the bargain bin and I bought it for 5 dollars. cool. so far, I really like the graphics and the game is pretty easy to play.
Paul