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Mixed or average reviews - based on 8 Critics What's this?

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Mixed or average reviews- based on 8 Ratings

  • Summary: Alternativa is a story that will take you to a world much different to what you'd expect in 2045. To a world destroyed by war and revolutions, a world led by an oppressive and cruel dictatorship.

    Classic point&click adventure game based on the original sci-fi/cyber-punk script which i
    s composed of a number of shorter stories that lead us through the lives of individual characters as well as the fictional world of the future. Collapse
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 8
  2. Negative: 0 out of 8
  1. Jul 5, 2011
    75
    AlternativA is a diamond in the rough: the themes are grown up, the puzzles solveable but the presentation seems old and the story isn't consistent.
  2. Dec 16, 2010
    70
    Alternativa is a sci-fi adventure that recreates a credible alternative future. Unfortunately many of its ideas are not properly developed and the final result is not as good as could have been.
  3. 70
    Remarkable adventure shows how the world could end after the next global war and its catching story lets you (most of time) forget about the obsolete visuals.
  4. Aug 14, 2011
    60
    Alternativa is a point & click adventure that provides a good basic package but nothing more.

See all 8 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 2
  3. Negative: 2 out of 2
  1. For a point and click game, it is decent. What I like is that you don't have to be clever but it is maybe too easy. The story itself makes you want to keep playing and the general plot is acceptable. Unfortunately, the graphics and sounds are mediocre at best. Most of the characters are bland and you don't really connect with the important ones or know anything about them, also there isn't much particularly interesting text inside the game. After I finished the game, I felt it was fairly good but looking back at it in detail it just seems really lackluster in a lot of areas. Expand
  2. Despite some good features, Alternative fails as an adventure game experience. The biggest weakness was the clunky game design. For example you are standing next to a large object and try to interact with it. The programmer has determined that the character must be not just next to it but in a particular location next to it. He therefore walks painstakingly slowly to that location, often for no purpose as there may be no interaction possible at that moment. This slows the game down and becomes very annoying. Most of the game time is spent watching him move slowly across the screen. You also have to do every little activity in the right order. Thus you are required to read a car numberplate and tell it to someone. You click on the numberplate to bring up the close-up screen, memorize it, cross several screens to meet your colleague, but there is no dialogue option. What you should have done was get to the close up screen and then click on the numberplate again, so the character realizes that he knows it. This sort of thing happens frequently and invariably means you have to go back and forth between locations, watching the hero walk slowly all the time.

    Another example. You are in a room with a friend. You have just acquired item A and you know you need item A and item B to achieve a task. You need your friend's help to get item B. Unfortunately, the right dialogue option does not appear until you have crossed town, tried using item A on its own, and heard your character say, "I need item B" Then you have to go back to your friend and the dialogue option will appear.

    Alternativa has some novel approaches to puzzles, for example a combination lock where, instead of searching for clues, you have to spend a minute testing all the combinations. That was neat. This is a clever example of a solution that is similar to what you would do in the real world. Some of the reality touches are just annoying. You hunt all over for a clever solution but the solution is just to go back to you friend and ask for the item you need. I could go on and on. There were plenty more little irritations. The graphics are very good. The animation, e.g. when your character performs an action, is appallingly poor. The English language voice overs are mediocre. The sound effects are reasonable. For the low price it would be just worth it if it wasn't so slow.
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