Who wouldn’t like to see Harry Potter get mocked in a game? I know I would. And so I have with Warthogs by Crystal Shard. Crystal Shard is the team that brought you a Tale of Two Kingdoms which was widely praised by the AGS community. I decided to review some earlier games first.
“It is time for the final exams at Warthogs Magic School, and notorious slacker Larry Lotter is about to flunk all of them because he spent less time studying and more time drinking beer. But there is yet hope! Using a spell to travel back in time, he gets the chance to do his day over again and pull some tricks to pass the exams anyway!” is the description on the Crystal Shard website. So basically Larry wakes up with a hangover from a party he can’t remember. Now it’s the middle of the afternoon, and he’s failing all his exams. Your mission this time, is to help Larry pass his exams by using a time travel spell. One makes things just go backwards a bit, and one resets your day.
The interface is easy enough, just click on something, and something happens. Talk, pick up, look at, it’s all one button. Makes it really convenient. Unfortunately the game suffers from what I call MGS, or Missing Goal Syndrome. What is MGS you ask? MGS is an issue where you can’t tell what the heck you’re supposed to be doing. I mean it’s obvious I’m supposed to help Larry pass his exams, but by doing what, I know not. Okay so this is an adventure game, and you’re suppose to take the clues and solve the mystery, as-it-were. Problem is, you don’t have a specific task indentified to allow you to pass the exams. I can go into the room, but what am I supposed to do next? Do I click on equipment, or myself, It seems It didn’t really help when I did that.
Okay so what about the rest of it. Well the graphics are actually quite good for an amateur / hobbyist effort. In fact I almost like them better than a Tale of Two Kingdoms (which I will review at a later date). The music is good but a bit too low, with no way of changing the volume, although the voices in the voice-pack version are audible. The voices themselves, however, are not that good. On the plus side they’re not particularly cringe-worthy. The “British” voices (although I think I could detect real Brits a few times, maybe, but don’t quote me on that ;-) ) seem to be some poor American or Canadian attempt at a British accent. Calliope DeRanger doesn’t even have an accent, and in fact is actually the low point in the voice acting. At times the voices actually talk over each other, making it difficult to follow anything.
I’m not trying to sound mean, but although it has a few laughs, it’s just isn’t that first-rate of an effort. I would say even though this is free, it’s probably not really worth more than a cursory look.
Final Analysis: Not terrible, but not that great, could have been done a little better. I am however looking forward to reviewing more of Crystal Shard’s games.
Name: Warthogs
Developer: Crystal Shard
Price: Free
Where you can get it: The Crystal Shard Warthogs page.
Tags: Adventure, ags, free, Freeware, game, games, independent, Indie, point'n'click, review, reviews
I certainly can’t speak for much of the rest of the voice actors on the project, but I’m sure I wasn’t the most convincing ‘brit’ character there. I was more concerned with getting Alan Rickman’s trademark guttural throat-voice down than having a convincing accent, as I most certainly am a North American.
But, you get what you pay for, right? Regardless, glad to see an honest opinionated review. Looking forward to reading more reviews, Uhfgood – keep them coming!