PC - Shannara

Haiku-Review:

point and click your way
through another cliché tale
care of Terry Brooks

Additional Comments:

Having grown up purely on console gaming, I sort of missed out completely on the PC world of gaming. I could probably count the number of computer games I've played since my childhood on a single hand - seriously. Let's see: Zork, King's Quest (not sure which one), Zany Golf, Morrowind, and um...Civilization. I'm not even kidding. However, it seems as though so many of my friends enjoyed the PC world - but did I really miss out on anything? Yea, there's some PC games out there I'd love to play, but really when it comes down to it, the PC world of gaming has just never looked as impressive to me.

Well, a friend of mine recently got back into a number of old DOS games and told me I should check out Shannara. Already having reservations based purely on the fact that it's called Shannara - dare I even bother with anything that has that hack's name attached to it? Fuck it, why not? Truthfully, I was curious as I had never played one of these VGA-based point n' click adventure games other than what vague memories I still held from one of the old King's Quest games. Amazingly, I was pleasantly surprised. The game was rather enjoyable, although I can see the game retaining no replay value whatsoever. Reason being, it is so ingrained in the most convoluted puzzles; the first time around they are such a headache, yet entertaining enough to figure out, but once you learn the solutions, you could probably plow through the entire game in 20 minutes.

Knowing little of PC games, I really can't properly compare graphics, although I do think they were well drawn. The music is likely the real highlight of the game. I just love listening to the opening theme, and I never thought I'd say such a thing regarding anything with the name Shannara attached to it. Heh... The likelihood of me finding any music to showcase is pretty slim though, so you're just going to have to take my word for it.

Remarkably, I really have nothing bad to say about the game - although I could go days on end about Terry Brooks and his cliché, fantasy muck-ups. I do have this to say though: because of this game, I now know how to properly pronounce Shannara. And I know I can put that to plenty of good use. [/sarcasm]

Nano-rant:

I still don't have a fucking clue how to pronounce Wolfsktaag!!

Rating: 3 Elfstones out of 5