I'm sure at some point this has happened to you: You receive a present that is just beautifully wrapped. The paper that the box is covered with is of the most stunning design. A huge, beautiful bow gracefully tops the box. Streamers of brightly colored ribbons cascade from it. Great care has obviously been taken in the wrapping of this gift. This present looks good! You can't wait to see what's inside that wonderful box. So, with great anticipation, you open the box and inside is..... underwear! And it's not even the right size! What does this have to do with games? Well, unfortunately, The City of Lost Children by Psygnosis is just such a "gift" as I've described.
City of Lost Storylines
The storyline behind The City of Lost Children is very intriguing to say the least. Based on the surreal movie of the same name, it deals with a mad scientist named Krank. Krank has been rapidly aging because he cannot dream. His henchmen, called the Cyclops, roam the streets at night kidnapping the city's children so that Krank can steal their dreams with a sinister device. With these stolen dreams Krank hopes to reverse or stop this rapid aging. Enter One, a circus strong man, whose little brother has recently disappeared, and Miette, a 12 year old orphan (or 10 depending on which information you go on. Miette seems to have aged two years between the back of the game box and the character profile contained inside the manual.). Miette befriends One and takes on the task of finding his brother and discovering what's been happening to the city's missing children.
Sounds promising right? Well, I hope you paid attention to the above paragraph because that's the most complete information you're going to get about the storyline. They seem to have forgotten to actually include it in the game itself. To make matters worse, there are several brief, but interesting, character profiles included in the games manual of characters that are also never fully explored within the game.
Missing, Presumed Dead: Gameplay
In the game you control the character of Miette as she wanders aimlessly through the city on a series of bland, typical get item "x" from person "b" to give to person "c" type quests. This takes up about the first three-quarters of the game. Only then, does the true plot (what little there is) of the game come into play. And this is done with a non-interactive cut-scene. Then you'll need to do a few more get "x" from "c" etc. type quests before... poof.... another non-interactive "movie" cut-scene resolves the plot and..... game over. Oh, yes along the way Miette does get to converse with several characters too. But the dialog between these characters and Miette is so brief and unrevealing that it's hardly worth mentioning. So let's move on to the games controls (or just run screaming into the night, your choice.).
The game is controlled entirely by the keyboard and rather clumsily controlled at that. It's almost as if the interface was originally designed with the console version of the game in mind and then just ported to the PC version. The arrow keys are used for forward, backward, left and right movement. The "Enter" key performs an action, "page up" picks up/puts down items and "page down" is used to talk to people. Tab will bring up the inventory and the space bar switches camera angles (when possible). Pressing the "ctrl" key along with the forward arrow key will enable you to run (and run you'll want to). Miette pretty much, well, plods around. Mind you the game didn't run slowly at all on my system, it ran very smoothly, but Miette walks through the game at a rather slow, uh, plodding pace.
The game view is that of the third person perspective, ala Alone in the Dark, and Miette moves very realistically as she goes about searching for the necessary items etc. The interface takes a big nose dive when it comes to finding these items though. A lot of the items in the game that you need to find you never actually see on the screen. As Miette walks around, if an object that you can pick up is near, it will appear in the upper left-hand corner of your screen. You then press the "page up" key to pick it up. This means that you must make sure you "walk" Miette over the entire area of each screen less you miss something pick-up-able (is that a word?). Another annoying thing is that to perform an action or talk to a person, Miette must be standing in EXACTLY the right spot or nothing happens. For that matter, if Miette is positioned a little bit "off" when trying to do something as simple as descend a flight of stairs or open a door, she will take several plodding (there's that word again) steps to the left or right before she will actually "do" anything. Ack!
City of Great Graphics
City of Lost Children isn't a total loss though. The graphics are absolutely drop-dead gorgeous! Bricks glisten wetly on the sides of buildings. Lights "glow" convincingly from the windows. Shadows "loom" in the dark corners.
Visually, this game is a treat and very well done. Although the screen shots don't really do them justice, these are some of the best graphics I've seen in an adventure game.
The music is also very well done and of "movie" soundtrack quality. The combination of the outstanding graphics and music do well to convey the dark, brooding atmosphere of the game world. The opening movie is also very nicely done (as is the closing one) and sets the tone for what could have been a great game. Which makes it an even bigger shame that the "world" is so shallow at the games heart.
City of Disappointment
The City of Lost Children is, in the end, just that.... a disappointment. Like that pretty gift mentioned earlier, The City of Lost Children is a game that is only nice to look at, lacking any real gameplay or plot. What little there is of the two is shallow and needlessly frustrating as you watch Miette, once again, do her little "shuffle step" to align herself "perfectly" to climb a flight of stairs or open a door. The characters that you'll interact with, who could have been fascinating, are all presented in a rather "flat" and dull manner. The tasks you need to complete are rather boring and very routine. And, to really make you wonder why you bothered at all, the story ending is taken out of your control and concludes as you sit there idly watching. Oh, and this game is very short on top of it all! I think it took me a grand total of about 4 hours to complete it (and no, I didn't use a walkthrough.). On the plus side, the game ran flawlessly and very smoothly in a DOS window in Windows 95 on my system and looked and sounded fabulous. If you can overlook the lack of storyline, sometimes clumsy interface and routine "go fetch" gameplay, you might enjoy strolling through this game just to enjoy the beautiful graphics. If however, like me, you actually want a game that is as enjoyable to play as it is to look at.... run, very fast, in the other direction and spend your gaming dollars elsewhere. This game is best left "lost".
Released: Apr 1997 Version: US Release Price: Street: $40 US Graphics: Absolutely beautiful Audio: Very good Longevity: Short, maybe 6 hours at most for the novice gamer Originality: Nothing really new here Appeal: Novice gamers, gamers who can overlook the lack of plot development Bugs: None found Packaging: Fair Interface: Clumsy and awkward at times Controls: Keyboard Specification 486-100 P75 recommended 8 M RAM 16 M recommended 45 M hard drive space 45 M recommended Pros: Beautiful 3D graphics Cons: Virtually no storyline Clumsy interface Routine, go-fetch gameplay Short Ending is taken out of your control