G4TV

It’s kind of depressing to think that the adventure genre hasn’t really advanced much since Myst became bigger than Jesus. Oh sure, the graphics have gotten better, and the stories a tad more coherent (for the most part), but we’re still mostly stuck to moving a cursor around the screen, blindly fiddling with this doodad or flipping that thingamajig in the hopes that it affects something that allows us to advance in the game.

Paradise doesn’t do much to fix the problem.

Welcome to the Jungle

It tries, though. Outside of the standard point and click adventuring through admittedly good-looking, pre-rendered locales, there are times in the game when you actually take control of a black leopard and run around in a real-time, 3D world.

The problem, though, is that these events feel tacked on. They don’t add much to the experience, aside from showing you that the real-time graphics don’t look nearly as good as the pre-rendered stuff in the rest of the game. It all ends up feeling like a lame attempt to break up the monotony the developers had to know the players would be suffering through from the game proper.

Hot, Hot, Hot

Otherwise, Paradise plays like just about every other adventure game on the market. Sweep your cursor around each scene, waiting for it to indicate that you’ve found a “hot spot;” a place you can affect or interact with your environment, either directly or by using something found in your inventory. There’s a whole lot of guesswork involved here, not only because most of the time you’ll never really know what exactly you’re supposed to do next (another staple of the genre), but because the animated cursor lags a bit, making it quite easy to sweep over one of these interactive areas without even noticing it.

Like so many other games in this genre, Paradise makes you feel like you’re just along for the ride, and not really exploring the world. Things would have been so much better if you could pick up and examine multiple bits and pieces throughout each area, even if they didn’t affect the overall quest in any way. At least the game wouldn’t feel so linear.

Mysts of the Past

Paradise is beautiful, for the most part, but it’s lacking substance. The plot’s slow burn and the incredibly limiting interface will have you struggling to continue playing after only a little while. The struggling adventure genre needs a shot in the arm, not just pretty locales and arcade controls for leopards.

Review By: Greg Sewart

Video Produced By: Matt Keil