Gold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado (PlayStation)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 1.5 stars Poor
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 3.0 (1.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Gerald Villoria
• Reviewed on: 01/24/2001
• Updated on: 05/17/2006
• Released on: 12/19/2000
• Originally published on GameSpot: Gold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado (PlayStation) Review

Gold & Glory: The Road to El Dorado recreates the adventures of Tulio and Miguel, the pair of Spanish con men from last year's DreamWorks animated film. While the heroic story of El Dorado may be a rousing enough tale, the console translation is just short of nauseating.

Gold & Glory shows off in the graphics department, boasting a large number of movie-lifted cutscenes and short computer-generated FMV sequences. However, the short sequences don't make up for a game that is so riddled with glitches, that it's downright unplayable. The character animation is achingly choppy: Initiating a run or crouch will invariably slow down your frame rate, as will picking something up, climbing some stairs, or sometimes just standing still. This gets so bad at times that your own expletives may drown out the dialogue.

Not enough of the story is revealed in the game, and many of the cutscenes serve only as eye candy, insufficiently filling holes in a plot that, without having seen the film, remains unclear. For example, in one instance, you arrive in the City of Gold, and, in the next, you're running from a giant stone jaguar, magically animated by the evil Tzekel-Kahn. You will have to read the instruction manual to not only learn about the game's chief villain but also about the protagonists' goal itself - the city of El Dorado. Furthermore, Tulio's main love interest makes only cameo appearances during the movie sequences - the game could have definitely benefited from including more of Rosie Perez's nubile young character.

El Dorado's largest failing is, without a doubt, its atrocious control scheme and gameplay mechanics, or lack thereof. Gold & Glory was designed similar to Sierra's classic PC adventure games, such as King's Quest and Quest for Glory. Your character is meant to go from screen to screen, picking up highlighted objects with the "activate" button and subsequently "activate" them on highlighted people or objects to solve puzzles that will unlock the next area. Sadly, all the imagination that made the old point-and-click adventures so inviting is missing here. Puzzles are ridiculously simple - more appropriately compared to inane guessing games and fetch-quests. A point-and-click interface would also have been preferable to the absolutely infuriating third-person Resident Evil-style movement. Characters are impossible to effectively control; their stuttering, skipping animations lead to situations where you're left facing the wrong direction and can't turn around, or else you are stuck behind an object or in an otherwise undesirable situation.

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Gold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado (PlayStation): $18.95 - $19.99

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GamesDirectOnline	$18.95	No

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