Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is one of the more unique point and click titles. One of its key selling points is that you can play through the game in three different ways. As well as this there are multiple endings and the game even keeps a score of how well you are doing. The only way to get the perfect score is to complete it using all the available paths.
This games also shows just how seriously companies took the point and click adventure back in its prime. The amount of money and time put into the project simply wouldn't happen in this day and age. Luckily for us this is one of the few occasions when a game with a massive license attached to it turned out to be absolutely brilliant.
The plot contains most of the standard Indiana Jones devices such as Nazi's, the feisty female side kick and the search for a mystical McGuffin. The game starts with Dr Jones trying find and artefact in the university. This acts as a kind of tutorial and gets players used to how the puzzles work and the general feel of everything. Once the object is found it is then promptly stolen by a Nazi with a dodgy accent and thus the race starts to uncover the mystery of Atlantis before they do. The recent Kingdom of the Crystal Skull contains many aspects present here only, in this case, there isn't a load of dodgy CGI and script hasn't been written by a five year old.
The script perfectly captures the feel and style of Indiana Jones and the voice actors, as per usual with Lucas Arts titles, are excellent. Special credit has to go to the voice of Dr Jones himself. Unfortunately Harrison Ford wasn't used but his replacement does an admirable impression of the great man and the timing of every line is just about perfect.
As mentioned earlier the really unique thing about the Fate of Atlantis is that you can complete the game three different ways. Two of the ways involve solving puzzles, one on your own, the other with your partner Sophia who you can ditch at a certain point should you wish. The other way is much more physical and involves fighting your way to the end. The fighting involves using the left and right mouse buttons to punch and proves very tricky as you progress. The three different ways of approaching the title also take you through different routes of certain sections of the game and even to a couple of completely different locations.
Having the overall score for your adventure on the screen is a nice touch as it saves after you finish the game. You can then go through it a different way to add to your score. This encourages you to go through the game multiple times to find all the different solutions to the puzzles and search out every point. The puzzles themselves are excellent and require players to think without being completely random or obscure. The only slight gripe is that a certain amount of travelling back and forth can be needed if you miss an object the first time around. This is also one of the few Lucas Arts games where your character can actually die so be warned.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is easily one of the greatest point and click adventure games of all time. Everything about it fits together just about perfectly to form a real adventure. The fact the game feels so at home with the Indiana Jones films is real testament to the skills of the development team and voice actors. Given the choice between playing through this and seeing Kingdom of the Crystal Skull we would go for this every time. It's unfortunate that Fate of Atlantis is so difficult to find these days in its original form as it deserves to be played by anyone who ever wished to move a cursor around a screen looking for tiny objects.
Overall 9/10
*As soon as we wrote this it was released on GOG making it much easier to find :)
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