A winning combination — Atari, DreamWorks, Sinbad — everything lined up for a terrific, family-oriented PC game, "Sinbad, Legend of the Seven Seas." You get to be a pirate, sail the Seven Seas, fight monsters called Sirens, Roc, a sea monster. The only problem is, this game stinks. Big time.
My copy of the game was rated T (for teen fantasy violence). The game is patterned after the movie, which was rated PG, and while I was playing it, that seemed to be the rating for the game also. My online search for the price of the game revealed that Amazon.com had the game, but it was rated E (for everyone) on their site.
More problems came quickly after the opening scenes. The scene is set up for you through a text message that scrolls a page at a time and you click to move to the next page. The typeface is ornate and likely pretty hard to read for kids up to third grade. This happened between each major boss battle, moving the story line along. There were no voice-overs to help. The only sound is the music, thumping, and some grunting and growling.
The tutorial is not bad, but when I tried to change the key assignments, I discovered I couldn't map my main movement to the spacebar. Maybe I'm getting old, but I remember playing many keyboard-oriented games that used the spacebar as the main movement/fighting key. I used the default keys and found I was as effective just hitting the three keys in any order and hoping for the best.
To move around the game, however, you need to use the mouse. And you also use the mouse for shooting the harpoon. Controls are definitely not intuitive. Minor complaint.
The cut scenes drove me crazy. When you entered a room, you had to wait while the computer loaded that scene. You'd clear the "enemies" and move on to the next, and wait for the computer to load that scene. I started to hate the "Loading" screen.
While in the game, "helpful" conversation would pop up on the bottom for you to read (in the midst of a battle, no less), giving you hints on what to do next. The hints were not useful. One that showed up repeatedly was: "There's the magic key, Sinbad. Better pick it up." No, I think I'll leave it — sheesh. Some other scintillating conversation: After hearing big booming at one time going on above-deck of the ship: "What was that? This can't be good." Laugh-out-loud funny, but I doubt that's what the gamemakers were going for.
The main boss fights were exercises in running in circles — literally. You had to keep away from them, run in at the right moment and hit them (only one hit counted, though) and then run away again.
Probably my biggest complaint is that you can't change the camera angle. You can't look behind you; you can't explore anything except exactly where the game wants you to go. For a game written to use the computers of today, this seems closer to a game I'd have played on my 486.
The packaging and options screen advertise that if you have a Pentium 4 chip, this game will have smoother animation, high-detail water and stunning particle effects. I don't have a Pentium 4, but I doubt it would have made this game any better.
I had my 13-year-old play this game, and he quickly gave up, saying it was really lame. So I'm not sure who this game should be marketed to — younger kids would be frustrated with the controls (or lack of them), older kids would be frustrated by lack of continuous gameplay, and adults would be insulted (at least I was) by the hokey dialogue and controls.
If you really want to try it, rent it. You'll only waste a couple of hours getting through it, if you can force yourself to play it to the end.
E-MAIL: kari@desnews.com