Despite the torrent of criticism that is about to erupt from my word processor, there is no getting away from the fact that Ishar 3 looks great. From the deepest dungeons to the streets of the city and the paths of the forest, it all looks gorgeous. The streets look lived in, the jungles look jungly and all the incidental characters pout and pose in perfect digitised glory. I will say it once again so you are left in absolutely no doubt - Ishar 3 looks great.
Ishar 3 GRRRRRR
However…
The game is certainly massive, but also for the most part empty, resulting in miles and miles of fruitless wanderings. Quite often you bump into characters who do not speak, do not move and don’t do anything at all really. You cannot buy things off them and you cannot hit them, so what is the point? They are just scenery.
The city forms only one of five giant locations, but it takes literally days of game time to get from one side to the other. This could be blamed on the control system (coming up in a bit) but it is mainly the stupidly compressed day/night cycle. Every few minutes real time, the sun sets and the night begins, and of course all the interesting places to visit are shut at night. Terrific. It is sort of like battling great hardship to arrive finally at the library in Alexandria (intellectual centre of the Hellenic empire from 323BC) and being told it is half-day closing.
You view the action from a first person perspective, which in many cases is a good idea. It works for Battlezone it works for flight sims and it even works for Trick Or Treat, our coverdisk game from AP 39. in my humble opinion, it does not work for Ishar 3. Or rather, the view works, but the movement does not. There is not any animation involved, so you jump from one static shot to another one 25 feet down the trail, and if you turn you get a completely new view. With your direction shown only by a small compass, it is horribly easy to get lost even with the map.
The combat is equally dire. You just click on an icon to make a team member swipe and watch splots appear on you or the enemy. Since your attacks are a curious yellow, it looks like some kind of flan fight to death, only not as interesting.
You will have guessed that I am not particularly taken by this one then. Adventure games are all about immersion in a strange and alien world, and this one does not do it for me. There is all manner of stuff that could well excite a hardened adventure gamer, but it is implemented so boringly and with such a creaky old game engine that I find it hard to believe myself. Certain team members won’t get on for example, and if you decide to kill them off, this could well lead to further internecine strife, but to get this kind of interesting in-fighting, you have got to be enthralled in the game world, and I never got that far. Ultima Underworld and Doom on the PC – now they are adventure games. Flashback, Worlds of Legend and Monkey Island on the Amiga – top adventure games each and every one. Ishar 3 does not even come close.
CAM WINSTANLEY
http://amigareviews.classicgaming.gamespy.com/ishar3.htm
