Comer
Point and click
First person
No action
No dying
This game never had an American publisher and has never been
extensively advertised. In spite of this, it has been known and
played by adventure gamers for its many good qualities and because
of the outstanding music it contains.
Comer is a one-man effort in the style often called Myst-like. It is
a first person point-and-click game that comes on four disks with a
manual that suffers somewhat from a less than perfect translation.
Story
Somewhere in the future there are archeological findings that imply
that human beings existed on the earth long before it was commonly
believed. These ancients experimented and altered the environment to
suit their purposes regardless of the detriment to other living
things. Through the centuries figures appeared who had a great
influence over the development of the world, and who tried to end
the harmful experiments and channel the energies in a more favorable
direction. These outstanding people are recognized by us as the
“Comers”. They left behind ample proof of their presence and
plentiful clues as to their activities. The player, the latest
person in this area, has to find these clues and solve the puzzles.
This will not only disclose what has taken place before but also
reveal who will be the next Comer.
It is interesting to note the philosophical nature of this game and
the unusual suppositions that went into its development. Whether or
not one looks favorably at the underlying arguments is up to
personal taste....
Gameplay
Comer uses a first person point-and-click interface and is played
entirely with the mouse. Navigation is self-evident, but
unfortunately the mouse action leaves a lot to be desired. There is
no way to tell the locations of hot spots and it is trial and error
to see what works. This is especially annoying at the start of the
game.
The mechanics of saving the game are quite good and include an
overwrite warning. The problem is that a saved game does not restore
the player to the point of the save, but rather to an earlier place
so that one has to travel for a while to arrive where the game left
off. This does not affect the changes that were made before the save
or negate the solved puzzles. The saves must include the *.CMR
extension to be loadable.
The game can be started from any one of the disks by clicking on the
logo and pulling down the menu. During the game, clicking on the top
of the screen brings up the menu; the "Esc" key cancels the video
sequences. The puzzles are not overly complicated, but are
interesting enough to hold the attention and to entertain. The
ending of the game is also somewhat unusual. One can still wander
around after all the puzzles are solved until one realizes what this
ending means.
Mr. Bill -- who wrote the very nice and thoughtful walkthrough --
has this to say about the ending: "It felt very strange to have a
game with no real ending, with no credits, with everything deserted,
no trees, no wind in the trees, very sad music, just you alone on a
volcanic island in the middle of nowhere. But that's exactly how it
would be if the story were real, isn't it?"
The graphics
At the time this game was designed the clear slide show-like
graphics were the norm. What we see are subdued colors. The shapes
are a little blocky but not unpleasantly so. On the whole it makes
for an interesting, uncluttered environment.
Sound and music
The voices are hard to understand. The music is good. Here is what
the designer himself says about it:
"All of 28 music titles of this audio CD were arranged / composed by
the author of Comer, entirely with the means of computer. Parts of
them are variations from works by the greatest composers of all
times, such as Peer Gynt, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler.
Variations were made with a modern and a new age taste, by adding
strong ambience and percussions."
This game and a music CD still can be purchased at the developer’s
web site.
My thoughts about the game
Even though the game was published quite a few years ago it has not
lost its freshness and has not aged too much. It has many of the
characteristics that appeal to a true blue adventure player and can
be played as a family game.
A thread of haunting sadness runs through the game that culminates
in an invisible pool of regret. There is a message here if you care
to receive it....
Minimum Requirements:
Windows 95/98
100 MHz Pentium or faster
16 MB RAM minimum
10 MB hard disk space
8x CD-ROM drive or faster
800x600 display, 24-bit True Color preferred
640x480 display, 16-bit High Color acceptable
Windows-compatible sound device
XP/Home:
I tried the game on XP/Home on a game partition formatted FAT32,
with Win98 compatibility settings. It played without any problem on
my computer:
XP/Home
Intel ® Pentium® 4 CPU 1.60 GHz
512 MB RAM
Nvidia GeForce4 Ti 4100
Review
Grade: C+
design copyright ©
2003
GameBoomers
Group
