Game Over Online ~ Ankh

GameOver Game Reviews - Ankh (c) Viva Media, Reviewed by - Steven Carter

Game & Publisher Ankh (c) Viva Media
System Requirements Windows 2000/XP, 1.5GHz processor, 256MB RAM, GeForce 3 64MB graphics card, 750MB HDD, CD-ROM
Overall Rating 83%
Date Published Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 09:47 AM


Divider Left By: Steven Carter Divider Right

Ankh is a point-and-click adventure in the style of the Monkey Island games. In it, you control a young Egyptian named Assil. One night, while hanging out with friends in the Tomb of the Scarab King, drinking beer and telling spooky stories, you accidentally wake up and anger a mummy, and the mummy gives you a death curse. Worse, your father figures out what you were up to, and he grounds you. So you have to sneak out of your house, and then you have to figure out a way to reach the Pharaoh, because only the Pharaoh can lift the curse. Along the way you have to dodge assassins, explore the underworld, rescue a maiden in distress, and, of course, mix banana cocktails.

As you can probably guess, Ankh is not a serious adventure. It is filled with humorous dialogue and funny situations, and it includes lots of pop culture references and inside jokes. For example, when you meet up with the assassins, you can ask them if it's possible to die in the game, and, finding out that it's not, you can choose to start insulting them. What helps with the humor is that the lines are well written and the voice actors do a fine job with them, and so Ankh is a fun enough game just to listen to let alone play.

Ankh is also programmed pretty well. It uses a third-person perspective, where you left click to cause Assil to move and look at things, and you right click to have him do things (like pick up objects or operate machinery). The mouse pointer is context sensitive, and the camera moves automatically, so control in the game is pretty easy, and the interface is effective. For some reason, Ankh crashed every time I tried to exit it, but otherwise it ran flawlessly on my computer.

However, if Ankh has a problem, it's that it's a little too short and easy. Almost all of its puzzles are fairly obvious inventory puzzles. For example, at one point you learn that you need to get a key from your father. Since you're currently grounded, you might think that you'd have to trick your father in some way to get the key, but no, you just talk to him and he gives it to you. Other puzzles pretty much involve you needing an item and finding it nearby in plain sight. As a result, Ankh doesn't take very long to complete. I finished it in well under 10 hours.

Still, Ankh is enjoyable to play. It looks good and it's well acted and it's funny. And while it's also short and easy, at least it's fun while it's short and easy, and I always prefer that to the opposite. So if you're looking for a humorous adventure, you should consider buying Ankh.

Ratings:
(34/40) Gameplay
(12/15) Graphics
(13/15) Sound
(08/10) Interface
(08/10) Storyline
(04/05) Technical
(04/05) Documentation

 

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Rating
83%
 

 

 
 

 

 

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