The Immortals of Terra

In space, no one can hear you get frustrated by illogical puzzles.

The year is 1346 by the New Galactic Calendar and mankind now shares the heavens with several alien life forms. You are Perry Rhodan, an immortal human who helped launch mankind's exodus into the far reaches of outer space. Now enough about your life, let's talk about the game at hand. The Immortals of Terra will take you on a point-and-click sci-fi adventure, featuring the fiction originally established by the German Perry Rhodan series. While the game has enough sci-fi lore to satiate the needs of the geekiest of nerds, the gameplay in The Immortals of Terra falls short. Its illogical puzzles breathe new life into the term "lost in space."

The story begins with your longtime lover being snatched away from your spaceship by a group of alien robots -- so far, so good. As a result, you are put under quarantine and not allowed to leave your ship. While the story has a lot of potential and back story via journals and notes, the game presents everything to you at a snail's pace. You begin your adventure by spending several painful, puzzling hours on your blasted ship. Nothing eventful will happen for a long time, but you'll be stuck in the same corridors for hours.

Adventure games are best when the stories flow naturally and plot elements are revealed through character interactions. While The Immortals of Terra does touch upon these elements, a lot of the time the story is presented when Perry talks to himself, thereby indirectly talking to you to fill you in, e.g. "[insert name] was always so [insert adjective]." It's an old, lazy storytelling trick that is more passive than active.

While I'm a big fan of adventure games, I'll be the first to admit that the genre has flaws. The Immortals of Terra encompasses nearly every problem of the genre. The biggest issues are contained in the puzzles. I know puzzles are supposed to bewilder you, but are they supposed to make you want to hunt down the designers and murder them in their sleep? One of the first terrible puzzles is encountered early on. While you're on your ship, you must gain access to several locked doors by figuring out how to fix a power generator. The puzzle will involve a little memorization, some pixel hunting, and a whole lot of zany. There was one part of the puzzle I couldn't figure out on my initial run through, so I just used a little logic and a lot of guessing to break my way through. Another puzzle half way through had me inserting a random item into a hole to navigate a complicated maze to complete a nonsensical objective. I would say the experience is similar to navigating a maze with a map when you're blindfolded. It's an incredibly painful puzzle. Every time you solve a puzzle, you'll encounter another with no satisfying story element weaved between them. It's sort of like doing math assignments for pleasure; who does that? Oh wait.

Another adventure genre blemish that The Immortals of Terra shares is that Perry will often pick up items no sane person would pick up. In the context of the game you know it will be added to your inventory for later use, and while it's not a huge problem, there is one part in the game where your character literally picks up a steaming pile of crap. Perry even says to himself, "Why am I even taking it up with me, this is disgusting." Yet he proceeds to stick the piece of fecal matter into his pocket.

The Immortals of Terra sometimes runs on a zany logic of its own. There are times when having a good head on your shoulders will hinder you from solving puzzles. When you're stuck, which will happen often, you will feel like you've exhausted all of your options. That is, until you try to think like a loon.

To be fair, even if you're sticking every pipe into every hole, you still might get stuck. For instance, there is a segment that requires you to borrow x-ray glasses from a non-playable character. When you ask for the shades the NPC tells you that he currently needs them and shrugs you off. Only after you complete a series of unrelated events does the game trigger an event that allows you to borrow the much needed goggles. Moments like these, which are many, will have you wasting your time and are impossible to predict. In addition, the game features rare minor glitches. For some reason, when you check your diary, your mouse cursor becomes extremely jerky and seems to move at three frames per second.

While the game does have its fair share of flaws, it does have some unique features. One puzzle forces players to access a security code by correlating musical notes to unlock a door. It's fairly innovative as far as adventure puzzles go, although it might leave tone deaf people up in arms. In addition, one staple that has always plagued the adventure genre is pixel hunting, a gameplay mechanic that forces you to roll your cursor all over the screen until you find a clickable item. The Immortals of Terra attempts to fix this problem by allowing gamers to search the entire area using a room scanner, a device that temporarily highlights clickable items. This is an admirable solution to an old problem that also fits fairly well within the context of the game; however, the system isn't perfect and the problem arises after you scan the room. This causes a three second delay that prevents you from accessing your inventory. While that's not a significant amount of time, it can add up and be annoying when you're constantly scanning new areas. A bigger issue arises when scanned objects appear off screen; which, luckily, only happens on rare occasions. In addition, there are rare times when Perry doesn't do what he's told. One time I made him run to the computer to turn it on, instead, he ran halfway across the room and stared at a wall. It's not a big problem, but it can be annoying.

What wasn't annoying was the game's graphics; which, despite its issues, look cohesive and good overall. The artistic backgrounds will range from adequate to stunning. While the backgrounds are rendered in 2D, the game creates the allusion of the third dimension by positioning the viewpoint at cinematic angles. In addition, little background animations featuring spacecraft flying off in the distance are a nice touch. The character models, while solid, are rendered in 3D and aren't as stellar. While they're not bad, they look a little generic. There's an alien race that looks like it has two stacked pancakes for a head. In addition, the fusion of 2D backgrounds and 3D characters don't gel all that well. Imagine Perry typing on his keyboard, but his hands are situated three feet above the keys; these aren't the cool futuristic air keyboards I'm talking about here. Another area where the game's graphics that needs a little more attention to detail is the cinematics, which look slightly above mediocre. The full motion videos would have looked awesome if they were released 10 years ago, but the terrible attempt at lip synching, awkward animations, and less-than-stellar character models make it look second rate.

The voice acting is also a mixed bag. Some voice actors play their role with conviction, while others make you want to cringe. Luckily the music is at least consistent. It's fitting for a space opera, although it isn't memorable. The biggest problem with the music is that there isn't enough of it. A lot of the time you will only be accompanied by silence or ambient noises. Fortunately, the sound effects are decent, even if they do sound like they were pulled out of the sci-fi sound stock.

Closing Comments
I love adventure games and puzzles just as much as the next guy, but The Immortals of Terra will have you constantly stuck, which isn't a problem if the puzzles made sense. The game sometimes runs on logic of its own and can often throw common sense out of the window. The Immortals of Terra has a good sci-fi premise and a decent story filled with intrigue, betrayal, and mystery at its core, but those elements aren't presented to you in an engaging manner. Luckily, it's not a bad game to look at; unfortunately the rest of the package just doesn't live up to the graphics. This adventure is only recommended for hardcore fans of the genre who don't mind zany logistical puzzles; otherwise, you should beam yourself the hell out of there.

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In space, no one can hear you get frustrated by illogical puzzles.

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