Spigot
04-12-2009, 03:33 PM
Whether you were visited by a giant bunny who graced your house with chocolate or partook in celebrations of a more spiritual nature, Turning The Spigot would like to take a more sombre tone this Easter weekend.
We're looking at a forgotten adventure game from the late 90's.
Dark Earth
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3657/3435906040_32c1073bf7_o.png
Year: 1997
Platform: PC
Rating: Sunny
# of Players: 1
Dark Earth is a game that, when released, was rather impressive for an adventure game. Rather than the usual point and click of most adventure games, Dark Earth was something more akin to the Resident Evil/Silent Hill style of gameplay. Unfortunately, the controls never quite worked as well as they were intended.
Whatever the faults of the controls might have been, the setting and general plot are worth remembering. Dark Earth is set on a future Earth where almost all of the light from the sun has been blocked following a cataclysmic impact by a meteor. Humanity's last remnants have built fortresses in the few places where the light still breaks through the clouds. Everything else around them is a twisted, mutated wasteland, though it is not radiation that poisons the land but darkness. In the world of Dark Earth, spending too much time out of the sunlight does more than just make you pasty and pale. You'll actually turn into something... inhuman.
Dark Earth puts you into the robes of Arkhan, bodyguard to the priests of light. Arkhan is poisoned in the opening act and must spend the rest of the game unravelling the reasons for his poisoning and also find a cure for himself before he completely succumbs to the darkness. As the game progresses, Arkhan gets darker and darker, both in appearance and demeanor, with very prototypical 'good/evil' dialogue options opening as his degradation increases.
Graphically, Dark Earth is quite impressive for its time. It used a rather impressive set of 3D models for the cast of characters that you interact with (and the monsters you fight) while you explored some rather nice looking pre-rendered backgrounds.
Unfortunately, the controls have a lot of the same issues that plagued early 3D/fixed-camera adventure games from the mid- to late-90's. You'll often have to fight enemies that you can't see (or worse yet, fight off camera entirely) and it could be a chore to maneuver around the environments. That said, there were a variety of weapons to chose from (mostly melee weapons, though there were firearms scattered about VERY rarely).
Dark Earth is a very tarnished gem from what was likely the last real golden age of adventure games. The genre still lives on, but quality entries are harder and harder to find these days.
Good luck tracking down a copy of Dark Earth! It's not something I'd recommend to everyone but it deserves its time in the sun (pun fully intended).
We're looking at a forgotten adventure game from the late 90's.
Dark Earth
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3657/3435906040_32c1073bf7_o.png
Year: 1997
Platform: PC
Rating: Sunny
# of Players: 1
Dark Earth is a game that, when released, was rather impressive for an adventure game. Rather than the usual point and click of most adventure games, Dark Earth was something more akin to the Resident Evil/Silent Hill style of gameplay. Unfortunately, the controls never quite worked as well as they were intended.
Whatever the faults of the controls might have been, the setting and general plot are worth remembering. Dark Earth is set on a future Earth where almost all of the light from the sun has been blocked following a cataclysmic impact by a meteor. Humanity's last remnants have built fortresses in the few places where the light still breaks through the clouds. Everything else around them is a twisted, mutated wasteland, though it is not radiation that poisons the land but darkness. In the world of Dark Earth, spending too much time out of the sunlight does more than just make you pasty and pale. You'll actually turn into something... inhuman.
Dark Earth puts you into the robes of Arkhan, bodyguard to the priests of light. Arkhan is poisoned in the opening act and must spend the rest of the game unravelling the reasons for his poisoning and also find a cure for himself before he completely succumbs to the darkness. As the game progresses, Arkhan gets darker and darker, both in appearance and demeanor, with very prototypical 'good/evil' dialogue options opening as his degradation increases.
Graphically, Dark Earth is quite impressive for its time. It used a rather impressive set of 3D models for the cast of characters that you interact with (and the monsters you fight) while you explored some rather nice looking pre-rendered backgrounds.
Unfortunately, the controls have a lot of the same issues that plagued early 3D/fixed-camera adventure games from the mid- to late-90's. You'll often have to fight enemies that you can't see (or worse yet, fight off camera entirely) and it could be a chore to maneuver around the environments. That said, there were a variety of weapons to chose from (mostly melee weapons, though there were firearms scattered about VERY rarely).
Dark Earth is a very tarnished gem from what was likely the last real golden age of adventure games. The genre still lives on, but quality entries are harder and harder to find these days.
Good luck tracking down a copy of Dark Earth! It's not something I'd recommend to everyone but it deserves its time in the sun (pun fully intended).