February 1, 2015

Gord@k

Hoffman and Associates, 1997


Gord@k is an underrated 3D adventure game created by using the QuickTime VR technology of late nineties with quite a good storyline, but regretfully below average gameplay, which I believe is the main reason Gord@k couldn't claim any significant place in the realm of adventure gamers.

You play as the fourth and the last agent chosen to enter the cyberspace to search and rescue the other three missing agents and also defeat Gord@k, an evil and malicious sentient computer virus, which has taken control of the cyberspace. The game starts in a garden as you take control after reading a long briefing of the missing agents and their reports, which they sent before they went missing. Your task in the game is to venture all the areas, collect inventory items, solve game puzzles and finally defeat Gord@k. The movements and others actions are simply controlled by pointing the hotspots with your mouse pointer and pressing space bar at the same time. Pressing space bar also make you travel automatically to the nearest available location or retrieve a hidden items not actually visible. So, it is recommended to check the surroundings of each and every given location for not to miss any inventory item. In some places you need tokens to travel or activate a gadget, but since the amount of these token are very limited one mustn't waste them on useless gadgetry, or just save your game before using them and load it back if you find it unimportant. There are very few game puzzles and most of them are inventory based, except the finally puzzle, which is time based and quite hard for average adventure gamers.

Visually, the game has very nice 3D graphics and landscapes and, as I mentioned before, the game uses the VR technology of QuickTime, which means that every screen can be viewed in 360-degrees by pressing and holding the left mouse button while you view the surroundings of a location. While sound and music, personally speaking, are the best features of this game, there is no voice acting except what you hear in the beginning of the game. As for the recommendation, I would only recommend this game to hardcore adventure gamers due to its buggy control interface and slightly hard puzzles in a linear storyline.