Review: Avarice Preview- by Mikael Engdahl

Developed by Continuous Software Systems and published by Stardock, Avarice has often been called the Myst killer, OS/2's answer to Myst. Featuring awesome 3D rendered graphics, an artificial intelligence engine and an original music score, Avarice sure sounds like a worthy opponent, one that can show us how OS/2 handles multimedia. But how is the game? Does it live up to its expectations? The definite answer to those questions will arrive later this spring when Avarice--The Complete Saga ships, but the preview gives us an indication of what the final game will look like.

Upon startup, even while the game is loading (which takes a while), you are met by impressive music, followed by a startup-loop (which for the full game will be replaced with an intro movie) containing a short description of the story and the intro picture. From here you can either load a previously saved game or start a new one. Both actions are performed from a menubar which is located at the top of the screen. From this menubar you can also change various settings, for instance the image quality, cache size and sound volume. Avarice's presentation is extremely customizable.

Getting Around

Avarice is played from the perspective of Gareth (i.e. you see things through his eyes) and everything in the Avarice world is done using a mouse. For example, you move around the mansion by clicking where you want to go. The mouse pointer is context sensitive and depending on which part of the screen you point to it changes to an arrow pointing up, one pointing down, or etc.

Avarice is actually rather unique in a way. It's not just the first real graphic adventure for OS/2, it also contains a great level of depth and great AI. All this contributes to make it a really interesting game. Throughout the game, you encounter a large number of objects. By right-clicking on an object you are presented with a small menu with actions that you can perform with that specific object (that either effect the object you clicked on or some other object), for instance examine or read (if it's a book). This menu changes from object to object of course, and in some cases this menu changes for an object during the game. There are thousands of objects (and in the final game also non player characters) to interact with, so there is almost no limit to what you can do. Some of the puzzles can also be solved in several ways and you do not have to solve all the puzzles to finish the game.

Under the Cover

Needless to say, this is a preview and not a final game, and this is quite noticeable. While it is much more stable than earlier betas, it is far from finished. It doesn't contain any major bugs (with the exception of random hangs here and there), but does have smaller ones. For example, when placing objects, they don't always end up where they should (sometimes they can be seen floating in mid-air). Sound also needs working on. Background sounds are interrupted when loading images and when playing sound effects.

There is no printed documentation included since it's a preview (the final version will have a hard copy manual). Like the game, the manual is under construction. The current version is stored as a text-file on CD and is available from the game interface.

How Fast Is It?

Supporting a whole lot of graphic resolutions (minimum VGA 640x480) and a color depth of up to 16.8 million colors, it doesn't require a genius to figure out that Avarice has severe hardware requirements. To be honest, I wouldn't recommend anything less than a 32meg Pentium with a fast CD-ROM, at least if you want to go with the high quality graphics [jpg 49.4k] . Setting them to medium quality (or preferably low [jpg 31.7k]) speeds up the game, but then things don't look quite as good. I dare not even think of how the game performs on an older 486 machine with 8 MB RAM and a 2x CD-ROM (the minimum system requirements). At this point, it is rumoured to be almost unplayable.

Whichever graphics quality you choose, you will still have unacceptably long access times when saving, loading or starting a new game. Spending a couple of minutes waiting for the "saving in process" message to go away can be really frustrating. I have been playing the game on a 486 66 MHz with 16 MB and a 4x CD, and while the graphic quality is impressive, the loading times aren't. However, the final version is promised to be much better in this area and CSS has promised an update to the Preview which addresses this issue too.

In what was probably a mistake, the developers set the game to default to "High" quality graphics with sounds and background loading turned on. As I said, these settings are best used on fast Pentiums with plenty of memory. This means that the low end computer user will spend some minutes sitting in front of his machine before he is even able to change these settings in an attempt to improve performance. This can be so frustrating that many will not spend the time necessary to realize that they can change the settings--it's that bad. Still, Continuous Software Systems representatives are very responsive on comp.os.os2.games and have acknowledged this problem. The final version is promised to improve on this area also.

The Final Version

Due out in February, the final version will include a lot more than just bug fixes. It will be a lot bigger (the preview is limited to small part of the house), the plot and ending will be different and it will (hopefully) be a lot faster.

Should You Bother?

This preview doesn't really live up to the title "Myst killer". There are far to many details that aren't finished and small bugs to annoy you. Myst is a lot slicker and faster. But since Avarice isn't finished it may be unfair to compare the two. Avarice really has great graphics (provided that you play with the best image quality) and a good story, but so does Myst. The final verdict will have to wait, but for now, Myst is in the lead.

After spending the whole Christmas weekend in front of my computer, I await the final game with great impatience. If you've either got a really fast machine or an unusually large amount of patience, and like mystery games you should take a closer look at this (though I recommend you wait until the final game arrives). Despite its enormous loading times, Avarice has the potential to become a big hit for Stardock and Continuous Software Systems. (Oh, what the heck--another reason to upgrade to that Pentium!)

* Avarice Preview
Continuous Software Systems
Published by Stardock Systems
Price: US$39.95
Mikael Engdahl has been an OS/2 enthusiast since v2.0. In his spare time, when not studying, he likes playing (OS/2) games.

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