At last we have it! The final episode to the Kyrandia Trilogy! I started playing these games years ago for the 2016 Extra Life marathon, and now I can finally say I finished the series. But was it a worthy end to the series?
Story: Some say Malcolm was made to begin with... just a bad egg who was going to make a name in the worst way possible. And history record them as right as the man who murdered the king and queen. The series of events that stemmed from this ultimately wound up with King Brandon taking the throne as the rightful heir and Malcolm frozen in time as a statue of himself. This was believed to be the tragic end of the story... until he got free.
Now, years later, Malcolm is loose and like so many years ago, he is out for revenge. But this time, it's his turn to tell the story. You will follow the jester through this new batch of hi-jinks as he lies, cheats, and steals his way to victory. But the path will not be easy, so brace yourself for a mutli-world-hopping adventure.
Still, not easy does not mean fairly straight forward. Each world is contained within it's own section of the game with it's self-contained portion of the story beginning with running from attempting to leave Kyrandia to avoid being arrested to a triumphant return to get everything you deserve. It's actually pretty well written, if a bit simple. Still when we get to the gameplay I think that will make a lot more sence.
7/10
Graphics: Like the other two in the series, Malcolm's Revenge is a point and click adventure title from the day of 2D sprite-work and will carry a lot of the classic look from the time. The world is bright and colorful, depicting several fantasy-based worlds ranging from a majestic kingdom to the literal end of the world and what follows. Everything is well drawn and animated, taking 2D sprite-work about as far as one could hope with the limits of a standard resolution for MS-DOS gaming. Still, there is no real scaling used, so expect some inconsistency when characters walk back and forth in the distance. It is nothing you would not expect in this kind of game from it's age, but where we are used to using 3D models to make this universally smooth it can throw you off a little.
But the game definately makes some improvements over the last two games, particularly in the interface. Where the previous two games used the bottom 3rd of the screen for your UI, Malcolm's adventure hides it away until you move the mouse over the a small bar at the bottom to scroll it into place, giving the game itself a lot more room to show you the world itself and let that be your screen.
In addition, where the other games were designed with a disk release first and used the CD-ROM editions to add voices, this one opts to add full screen cutscenes to the mix. They are not particularly consequential (for example, one of them simply scrolls across a CGI jungle that, while it looks nice, it looks nice for the time and clearly has some artifacting due keeping the frames of the video smooth despite the limits of CD-ROM technology of the time), but they add a little bit of extra flavor to your adventure when they come up.
Overall it holds up very well and looks really good. But even as it holds up, the new elements show it's age a lot more then the style does since it shows the then new technology of CD-ROM for the limits it had.
6/10
Sound: Do not expect a lot out of this game when it comes to sound effects, but this is not the kind of game really doesn't open a lot of opportunities to show prowess there. You can expect birds chirping and birds and boops and bops to sounds right with a taste for old school looney tunes as an inspiration, but its nothing to special.
The music, on the other hand, is going to land a much stronger impression, beginning with the opening menu theme screaming 90s about as loud as possible, from the hiphop beats to the "Come on, yall" as it's single repeating line. This game simply would not sound this way if it was made 5 years sooner or later. Thank fully the rest of the sound track seems a lot more generic of the genre instead of the era.
Still, the star for these kinds of games is always the voice acting, and the same is true for this one... for better and for worse. The line deliveries in this game run the gamut of absolutely amazing to really just there to get the point across... and that's just Malcolm. Expect the same levels for everyone else too. Although in this case, the game also does something new that I can not comprehend. It seems a lot of lines int his are met with laugh tracks! Enough so, I honestly thought the game was going to pull a surprise ending where the trilogy was a stage-show from the beginning. No such luck, and in fact no good reason for the laugh track at all. Thankfully its common enough to forget about by the end like it doesn't exist.
6/10
Gameplay: This is arguably one of the most ambition point and click titles I have ever played in my life, but it is so at a rather steep cost. When you start the game, Malcolm is standing at the royal dump (no that is not a euphemism) and, having just gotten free of his stony prison, declares his intent for revenge,,, and you are off to the races! You can play the game completely by mouse and it doesn't take long or any manual to get the basic interface down: If you can leave via that side of the screen, the mouse cursor becomes an arrow pointing offscreen. If you are going to use an item, it is the cursor, and any other time, the mouse cursor is the pointer you would expect... and this is the first place the game falters.
This cursor is your "do anything" icon, from interacting, to moving, to commenting, to picking up items... but until you click, you won't know for sure what it's going to do. Sometimes this leads to happy accidents which can progress the game in ways you did not expect, but other times, you will find yourself in a pixel-hunt since the many of the things you will need to interact with don't stand out exceptionally well. And your first screen shows this issue starkly clear as there is nothing to tell you where to click in the dump to go fishing for resources (which you will want to do). Even more directly the game makes it clear the items you get this way are random, so while they may be useful, what for will be about as clear as mud.
Nor does the game make your inventory particularly useful as you only have 10 slots to store things. Thankfully the game makes up for it by using the same drag-and-drop mechanics the entire series is known for: If you want to use an item, simply click on it to make it your icon and click where you want to use it. If you can, it works, and if you can't it drops there in the scene. If you are limited by the location of Malcolm, he will let you know, but for the most part if it's on the screen you can interact with it. In essence the world is your inventory, provided you make note of where you leave things. The only exception to this is when you reach a new "world" in which case your inventory also resets to a set of starting items, assuring you there is no way you missed something you will need later and made yourself a dead-man-walking.
But this is also where the game stumbles for it's ambition. The first section of the game is absolutely incredible in how much freedom it gives you, even as you don't take too long to figure out your first major goal (get out of Kyrandia so you don't get arrested.... very possibly a second, third, fourth, fifth, ect. time). How you do that is up to you.. seriously, this isn't just an impression. You can do many many different things which will iether push you towards or away from about six possible ways out of the lands. It is incredibly freeing to understand you are getting to do this your own way! However, it also brings on a fear since you can also cut away some of those paths in the process. The game does nothing to ensure you always a see there is a path and in fact I found out how much freedom you have looking over the guide that came with the gog release of the game to ensure I didn't kill my game within the first hour of playing! A little more care here would let this first world really shine a lot more then it does.
And while the game tightens up and gets more clear as it goes along, it does so losing this freedom and with another reason you will be thankful to have that guide: the second part of the game. In this part you are looking to get some pirates to join you in taking over Kyrandia, and your quest to convince them will require you to navigate the island's jungle... one of the single most convoluted maps I have ever experienced in a video game. Even if you need nothing else in the guide, you will be thankful for the map because navigating this jungle is an absolute nightmare and even looking at the whole-page map will show you why and make you thankful for it's existence.
And sadly this is not the final frustration this game will offer you. While overall a pretty good game, it will piss you off with one of the last mechanics you will deal with. At this point you will need specific items which until this point have been available by looking in the map or being clever, but now, it's just a shop you sell useless junk to. You might think this is clever, and it should be, but the pawn shop owner will only buy one specific item from you, requiring you to go in and out of the shop many many times to use it, resulting in you basically getting pissed off enough to want to put your mouse through the screen and strangling the guy with the cord.
At it's core, this is actually a pretty cool little game. But the ambition it started with could have been planned better to let you step forward without worrying about ruining your chances to win immediately and ends with one of the most boring, time consuming, and frustrating mechanics in order TO finish the last puzzle (or puzzles, depending on choices you made) in the game, it just leaves a sour taste it didn't need to.
5/10
Bugs: For all the issues this game had, bugs were not one of them. This game ran absolutely perfectly.
Score: Malcolm's Revenge is arguably one of the most unique point and click games I have ever played and has a lot of great ideas that work very well. Unfortunately the things it does wrong more then frustrate the things it does right to the point of ruining the experience in general. If you need to finish the trilogy, it's worth playing, but it's not a game you want to play without help, and definitely not the finale the original game deserves.
6/10
System Requirements:
- 1.8 Ghz processor
- 512 MB RAM
- 3D card compatible with Direct X 7
- 2 GB hard drive space
- Windows 7, 8, or 10
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (2700) 3.2 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce 1660 (6GB VRAM)
- Windows 10 (64 Bit)
Source: GOG.com
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