GameSpot editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
OK
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 10/24/2008
- Released on: 07/03/2008
- Originally published on GameSpot: The Immortals of Terra: A Perry Rhodan Adventure (PC) Review
Perry Rhodan, at least according to our limited research, is the lead character in the biggest-selling series of sci-fi books ever published. That will surely come as big news to befuddled stateside geeks, at least until they read a little bit further and see that Perry is mostly big with the kids in Germany. With this question answered, you can now rest easy knowing how some guy you've never heard of managed to get his name tacked on as the subtitle to developer 3d-io's space-faring adventure The Immortals of Terra. That, however, is the easiest mystery to solve about this point-and-clicker because the game itself is loaded with maddeningly illogical puzzles. It would take less time to learn German and read all of Perry's more than 2,000 adventures in their native language than it would to figure out this game without fleeing to the sanity-saving safety of an online walk-through.
You play as Perry Rhodan, a studly Flash Gordon sort who has apparently been rewarded with virtual immortality after discovering alien technology on the moon back in the 1960s and using it to turn fractious Earth into united Terra. The scene is set in the far future of the year 4934, where there are robots--nasty robots that attack Earth at the beginning of the game and make off with Perry's squeeze, the brilliant archaeologist Mondra Diamond. Your objective is to track her down by figuring out who sent the killer bots and possibly save the universe, as well as root out some treachery in your own ranks along the way.
A confusing backstory and aliens that look like Mayor McCheese combine to create one of the most obtuse adventures you'll play this year.
But these ostensibly exciting plot points offer a meager payoff. For starters, the game assumes you already know all about the Perry Rhodan universe and its leading characters. While a lot of work has clearly been done to bulk up the game world through loads of text, including encyclopedia entries that pop up onscreen every time you use a computer to scan a piece of evidence, there is virtually no effort to properly introduce anybody. So even though you collect tons of random trivia about everything, from alien codes to an accident that left a brilliant scientist as nothing more than a brain in a flying box, you never feel like you really know the characters, their motivations, or the world around them. This isn't helped by a liberal dosage of sci-fi gobbledygook about such things as supran, Illochim, Beings of Water, singing crystals, and so forth. Basically, you're always a couple of steps behind the plot and pushing forward solely in the hope that there's a big explanation coming just around the corner. Unfortunately, there isn't one. Those who grew up with Perry Rhodan might love this stuff; those who are getting their first exposure to the guy are just going to be confused.
When The Immortals of Terra isn't baffling you with its story assumptions, the game lulls you to sleep with a hidebound commitment to traditional adventure gaming. This is one of those games where you pick up anything and everything, no matter how useless it might seem at the time. You do this because you know that even the most inconsequential lunchbox and robot part is eventually going to be as valuable to you as the Holy Grail is to, uh, guys searching for the Holy Grail. There isn't any sense of self-referential humor through most of the game, either, which is often the only saving grace in these "swipe everything that isn't nailed down" adventures. At one point, you're even forced to pocket a pile of carnivorous plant dung for no obvious reason. Perry protests about how disgusting it is to scoop poop from this refugee from Little Shop of Horrors, yet he does it regardless.
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