The Legend of Kyrandia - Book Two: The Hand of Fate

Last month wc were just on the brink of zipping off to Volcania; this month we're actually in Volcania. Not a particularly tricky game this, but substantial enough to give a few good TruePlayers" Sunday afternoon ague.

Volcania

Pick up everything you see (starfish, sand dollars, rocks and seashells) and stash them in your newly eviscerated inventory. Go east and encounter an elderly couple. Chat to them and theyll offer you a map to the centre of the world (for a price). Stroll around Volcania. chat with Jessica, ignore the man at the desk and the man on the couch and then return to the couple. Buy the map for six sand dollars, and theyll ask you to register a sand stone. Pay them six starfish and then theyll request you buy insurance forms for six seashells. Once youve forked this out. theyll tell you to jump down a vent. Jump down one of the hot-air vents to find yourself in the lava cavern.

Pick up the two rocks and go west to find a flask. Head east until you reach the stick. Take it, go east and cross the green bridge. Climb the green steps until you reach the lead heart. Turn it into gold with the alchemists magnet and then throw the stick twice to the baby dinosaur. Nip over the geyser and grab some black pebbles, picking up a third rock en route. Return to the T-Rex and grab some crystal fuzz from the palm leaves. Put the black pebbles, crystal fuzz and gold heart in the cauldron to make a blue potion. Fill the flask and use it on Zanthia to magick a teddy-bear. Ride the T-Rex, note the red rag, and go back to the room where you found the flask. Leave and then come back until the dinosaur is facing the anchor door. Pick up the fourth rock, enter the anchor door and use the red rag on the dinosaur. Put the parchment in your spell book. Put rocks over the vents in the anchor room, near both the green bridge and the green steps, and on the vent near the bubbling lava. Stand on this rock and... whoosh.

Enchanted forest

Pick up the flask and the pine-cone. Go west and encounter a guard. He wont let you cross the bridge, so pick up some snow, twigs and moss. Pick up the rolling stone and zip back to the flint rock. Place the twigs near the flint and use the rolling stone on the flint to make charcoal. Place the snow, moss and charcoal in the cauldron and fill the flask with the resulting potion. Go back and use the potion on the guard. Once hes gone, grab the walnut from the hollow at the end of the bridge. Examine the dented statue and then use the alchemists magnet on it.

Now, take the drum and jacks out of the box. Take the acorn and throw the jacks to the people being chased by a foot. Go back to the trees and place the drum on the stump. Walk past the trees to the tram, talk to the squirrel and give him the pine-cone, acorn and walnut. Use the rolling stone on the tread wheel to power the tram.

Mountain top

Note the kids lollipop and then visit the Hunters Lodge. Talk to the hunters. They want the yeti. Examine your spell book and then pick up the flask. Take some musk from the oxs head and pick up a cannon ball. Head outside and take the feather duster and some snow from the side of the tram station. You need sugar. You need that lollipop. Turn the cannon ball into gold and give it to the kids mother. Nick the lollipop and shove the snow, lollipop, musk and feather duster into the cauldron to make a yellow Abominable Snowman potion. Fill the flask and use it on Zanthia to change her into a yeti. Go into the Hunters Lodge where youll be captured by the real snowman.

Go outside and break off three icicles. Go outside once more to see the hunters, and then go back inside. Take the flask from the row of bottles and pick up the candy and the bottle of cologne. Grab some feathers from the pillow on the couch. Make another potion with the icicle, candy, cologne and feathers. Go outside and use the potion on the hunters. Use the icicle to climb the path and then go east.

Mystics cabin, rainbow bridge

To fix the rainbow machine, fill the seven flasks with the seven colours of the rainbow. They are, from left to right: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Read the notice and get started. Drink the hot water to free a flask. Make the indigo potion first by putting the amethyst and the blueberry in the cauldron. Top up the appropriate rainbow machine flask and empty the cauldron.

Some games are created, others are manufactured. Some are a flash of inspiration from deep within the programmer's mind. Others are clearly istructed around a canny idea of what the market wants. Hand Of Fate is one of the Utter. It's so packed with references and influences you can almost hear its brain cells creaking.

The planning (rather than creative) process must have gone something like this: "Hell guys, humour seems pretty popular these days so we'll have some of that and lots of lovely graphics too. they always go down a treat... and magic, yeh a bit of magic never did a game any harm... and., wait for it... this is the nineties so let's have a chick as the main character. And she can flash a bit of thigh as well."

Greetings to the new brunette

Which is not to say that Hand Of Fate is a bad game (far from it), its simply a rather uninspired one. The plot concerns the attempts to save Kyrandia, which is disappearing piece by piece faster than you can say "Oh bugger, it's the bailiffs". The heroine. Zanthia. has been nabbed by the kandian equivalent of a yts scheme and dispatched to the centre of the planet to retrieve an anchor. For reasons that are not made entirely clear at the time, this will save the island. Ho hum. yours is not to reason why. The game is a fairly standard point and click adventure, set in numerous (well, about five) different environments - each one containing a number of imaginative and fairly original puzzles. A major part of the puzzle element is based around finding the ingredients for potions. Tins advanced cookery course is something of a novelty in the game (one of the few). The spell book doesn't always make clear exactly what the ingredients for a spell are, or what it does when you mix it. (It's all a bit like the time I made Hungarian Goulash... but that's another story.) The skill is realising which potions will solve which problems and then working out how to make them.

Must I paint you a picture

The graphics are undeniably beautiful. Well, the backgrounds are anyway. Zanthia herself varies between something out of a Slimfast ad and something out of Birds Of A Feather, while her chum, Marco, has an amazing hairstyle which wobbles when he talks. (He obviously gets his wigs from the same place as me.)

Must I paint you a picture

The graphics are undeniably beautiful. Well, the backgrounds are anyway. Zanthia herself varies between something out of a Slimfast ad and something out of Birds Of A Feather, while her chum, Marco, has an amazing hairstyle which wobbles when he talks. (He obviously gets his wigs from the same place as me.)

Unfortunately, the cd version is lumbered with full speech. This is the only way it significantly differs from the original floppy version and, frankly, it's a mistake. Yes, I know all cd-rom games have speech now - that's what makes them cd-rom games, but in Hand Of Fate it only goes to emphasise the game's key weakness - an appalling script. The plot, puzzles and locations are imaginative, but the dialogue is dire. Hearing it only emphasises how painfully unfunny it is. Add to this the fact that it sounds as if it's being read by the cast of the school play from hell and you'll realise that silence is golden. If you've got it flaunt it, but if you're not Sam 'n' Max, then keep your gob shut.

Honey, I'm a big boy now

I seem to have put myself in a bit of a spot. When I reviewed the original Hand Of Fate I gave it 80+, a Recommended no less. Now I seem set to give it a bit of a drubbing. Well, I'm not really. The game is nice to look at and easy to play with (rather like... oh never mind). The puzzles are, with a couple of notable exceptions, a tad on the easy side but it's still a good beginner's game. Unfortunately, the cd-rom version emphasises the weaknesses without adding to the strengths.