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Divide by Zero's third adventure release is an uneven space opera that has
interesting puzzles and plot - marred by a huge amount of gratuitous violence and
prafanity that may turn many players off. Played in the third person through an
extremely linear path, Orion's plot revolves around your character's investigation of
the death of his son at a research station in deep space. Other, more farfetched (or
derivative) plot elements come into play later in the game. Much of the backstory is
provided in a nifty little graphic novel packaged with the game, entitled "Devlin's
Story". Other information, as well as comprehensive installation notes, are included
in a well-presented game manual. The point-and-click user interface performs
satisfactorily, with hotspots identified on the screen and possible object interactions
displayed with the right mouse button. This "giveaway" of information on how you can
act upon objects may make the game puzzles rather predictable and easy. On the other
hand, you may find yourself spending the majority of gameplay merely moving your
character from one station destination to another - often a very time-consuming process
since no "zip" mode or shortcuts have been provided and access points seem arbitrarily
restricted from each other. We'll suspend our disbelief about the amount of gravity on
a 10-acre asteroid. Despite some good puzzles, the game is chock-full of completely
gratuitous profanity. If you're offended by that or simply don't see it as adding
anything to the atmosphere of an adventure game, then you might want to avoid it
altogether. There are also a few mildly-graphic scenes of animated violence, which,
together with the language, seriously hampers what enjoyment you can get out of it. |
