should Fate lend favor,
intrepid island hopper;
rend the djinn's blessing
Additional Comments:
First and foremost, I'm amazed I even finished this game. The Genie's Curse has been on my back burner of incomplete games for at least three years now. In fact, it graced my list of neglected curios a couple years back which was mostly populated with games that have fallen to the wayside either out of boredom or they just plain suck for one reason or another. This particular title was given the boot because...well, there's no sugarcoating it; it was nothing more than a gaming abomination that dragged TSR's good name through the mud. As a result, the years passed and I gave nary a thought to this digital AD&D charlatan.
Turns out, blatantly ignoring this game was the best thing I could have ever done. While looking through my backlog of games that I'd like to finish before I start tackling some new ones, I figured I could quickly phone in the remaining required runs in The Genie's Curse (Normal through Very Hard) and call it a day. However, after returning to the game after a three year absence, I no longer found myself loathing every second of it. Instead, I began to appreciate it as a worthwhile action/adventure puzzler. A rather unforeseen surprise occurred. I found my sabbatical from the digitized Al-Qadim was bookended by wildly polarized opinions. Maybe "wildly polarized" is a gross exaggeration, but there's a definite contrast between my original thoughts and how I find the game today.
I originally chose to play The Genie's Curse for two reasons. One, while I'm not the biggest fan of PC games, I've always heard so many good things about all of the old AD&D titles, and since their heyday was during my personal preference, 2nd edition, I wanted to track some of these games down. And for the second reason, which singled out Al-Qadim over the others, is because at the time a group of friends and I were trying our hands at the table-top variation of the Arabian-themed world. What better way to enhance the setting than to see SSI's interpretation of Zakhara's exotic mysteries, lavish with the influence of genie-kind?
The road was short-lived, however. Disappointment reigned as the game, while visually representing TSR's marquee, seemed to bear little to no semblance mechanically. Although I've never been crazy about the old first person dungeon crawls, they always felt like a fair re-imagining of the D&D ruleset. The Genie's Curse, however, seemed to throw the books out the window. The typical list of attributes etc. were there - I could see them on the stats screen - but it felt as though they were nothing more than an aesthetic choice purely to confirm The Genie's Curse was properly branded as an AD&D title. As mechanics, they were useless. Ok, leveling brought about HP increases; whether or not THAC0 or saves were affected is questionable, and with a fair degree of certainty, I'd say no as neither of those elements were present on the stats screen. Instead, combat was enhanced by weapon upgrades - magical bonuses if you will. Certainly isn't far-fetched by any means, but the whole AD&D mechanic becomes belittled and pointless which makes me question how this game is tied in with the franchise outside of terminology. Maybe I'm being far too analytic for my own good and needlessly dissecting the game thus overlooking what could just be a great adventure. But at the same time, I've always enjoyed when D&D titles bear marking resemblance to their table-top kinsmen.
The control frustrated the hell out me as well. This is one of the big reasons why I don't like PC games in the first place. I hate using a keyboard/mouse combo. While the options allowed for a controller, using a joystick turned out to be even worse, especially when trying to use the direction lock configuration. Since I'm not a PC gamer, I'm unfamiliar with certain control tactics, so I don't know if the direction lock is a common tool or not. I found it utterly frustrating, yet used it only because it gave better purpose to the sling in numerous encounters. Whenever I attempted to kill the direction lock, I found myself running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I'm completely dumbfounded over this though, as it's so much more natural to turn around on command instead of having to endure extra button presses just to about-face.
And finally, some of the puzzles...holy cow! It's not that they were difficult, but some of them fell under the sway of pure aggravation in that all logic seemed lost at a moment's notice. A number of puzzles were well designed but some felt mired under the curse of perhaps suspicious coding, namely a couple in the dungeon leading to Rashidin's library. One particular section perplexed me as to its actual working up until my final playthrough on Very Hard. Before that, I suppose I just managed to ascertain the solution blindly. And speaking of gameplay elements that managed to elude me, I don't recall having to hunt down the Bottle of Eternal Emptiness until my final playthrough either. I vaguely recall Fuwwah ash Ghazha always clamming up after retrieving Idrid's veil therefore resulting to a quest for the Singing Scimitar. On my final playthrough, I decided to acquire some of the extra XP that came with each so-called gift to Gubishbuskin instead of foregoing the time consuming back-and-forth sailing between Jaza'ir Jiza and Bandar al-Sa'adat by questing for the legendary weapon. In doing so, I managed to be tasked with fetching the magic bottle for once. Honestly, up until this point, I never knew there were two possible solutions to overcoming the stupid efreet.
Certainly, none of the above factors is enough to condemn the game, but on my initial playthrough, I found the game incredibly tedious and simply lackluster at best. I continued to run the game in hopes that I could quickly put it behind me - after all, the puzzles were no longer of concern. With each increasing difficulty I could essentially speedrun it. Halfway through Medium, however, I lost all interest in the game. It was just too much of a chore; not a spark of entertainment to be found.
Fast forward approximately three years and suddenly I no longer abhorred the game. It didn't exactly fall in my good graces, but all the irritants of the past washed away leaving me with a decent adventure title waist-deep in puzzles. I can attribute two reasons to this. First, having stepped away from the game for some time, upon my return while I knew what the game wasn't, I no longer had certain hopes which could be easily dashed. I came to accept the game as Al-Qadim in name, but not in theory. But secondly, and more important, I was finally able to play the game with a proper control configuration on a controller without a wonky joystick thanks to JoyToKey. Surprisingly, I've made use of JoyToKey for the past couple years, but somehow never thought of applying it to older PC games. I may even start exploring more of these old adventure games thanks to this discovery. Eh, maybe... But what really had me jazzed about this was that I no longer had to rely on lock mode and I could properly play using proper directionals. This alone improved the gameplay immensely and raised my enjoyment level exponentially.
There is one complaint I still have to throw out there though now that I've mustered every setting. I question what exactly the difficulty settings are adjusting throughout the game. Besides an apparent jump in hits required to take down an opponent between Medium and Hard, all the difficulty settings felt roughly the same. Honestly, I had the roughest experience on Very Easy, but I have to attest that was obviously down to it being my blind run. Still, while the puzzles would no longer confound, I'd expect the enemies to pose a larger threat. Again, during my Hard run a couple spots did me in, but then on Very Hard said spots proved easy to tackle. Maybe I just knew what to expect or how to handle the baddies, but I think I'd at least sense the progression I felt going into Hard. Heck, on Very Hard I didn't even bother resorting to any of the parchments when it came to defeating the Nameless Masters once and for all. And forget about shards - I don't think I ever used any of them except once near the end of the Medium run. Ah well...
In the end, The Genie's Curse isn't all that bad of a game. And while it is representative of Al-Qadim, I don't find it representative of Dungeons and Dragons in the slightest. As a recommendation, I'd recommend it to fans of PC-based adventure games, but wouldn't dare to fans of PC or any quality video game bearing the mark of Dungeons and Dragons as it feels horribly distant from the franchise mechanically, even if it came with full 2nd Edition style monster sheets for newly designed foes that could be directly integrated into its table-top counterpart. But I've read that I can only move up from here when it comes to AD&D computer games. Common consensus lumps The Genie's Curse at the bottom of the barrel it seems, so for that I can only look forward to some of the other titles out there: Menzoberranzan or Planescape: Torment for instance.
The music, while relatively cliché - obvious Arabic intonations - is fitting and actually quite enjoyable to listen to. I'd love to share some, but the likelihood of finding some appears to be slim and none. But on the topic of audible gratification, I have to make note of the wounded on the island of Al'Katraz. I don't know what it is, but their anguished groans cracked me up every time and I always found myself having to make a detour just to listen to their pain. Is that wrong?
Nano-Rant:
Holy crap! Attempting to recover the Nameless Master's secret treasure on Hajar is the true definition of dickish gameplay. I don't know if there's an actual trick to dodging those lightning bolts, but I averaged about a dozen healing potions over the few short seconds of electric blasts within that accursed circle of pillars.
Rating: 2.5 adages on barleycorn out of 5*
*It should be noted that had I finished the game three years ago, I'd likely have given it a 1 at best - and that would have been a real stretch.
