GameSpot editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 02/13/2001
- Updated on: 02/14/2001
- Released on: 01/22/2001
- Originally published on GameSpot: The Ward (PC) Review
The Ward combines elements of other adventure games, such as LucasArts' The Dig and Inscape's Drowned God, the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and a hodgepodge of UFO-related conspiracy theories. It begins slowly but in a promising manner, then shoots itself in the foot soon after by resorting to nearly every pitfall of adventure game design. It's a disheartening turn of events because the story, as it develops, deserves better than to be upstaged by a bunch of slider puzzles.
At the beginning of The Ward, a series of strange events has left two members of a three-man moon mission dead. The survivor, David Walker, awakes in a strange laboratory, with a security necklace around his neck and the corpses of humans and aliens surrounding him. As he wanders the halls, he realizes that this is not the result of a battle between the two species, but of a rebellion that is still raging within the base. He meets some aliens, the ubiquitous grays, and learns that he is the Ward, a legendary hero.
He is sent to a human colony, and things pick up again after the game stumbles around the hackneyed "legendary hero" plot point. At the colony, Walker learns that abducted humans are actually kept by the aliens, and those humans who seem to return are actually drones implanted with false memories. Walker must find a means of saving the humans and helping the grays with their rebellion against their wicked rulers, the reptoids.
That's a good deal of plot, and much of it is interesting. The game has three distinct sections. The first takes place in the alien base, where you must do your best to make sense of the alien technology and the battle that rages around you. There are some nice moments in the first segment, but it also features some incredibly difficult puzzles. One, involving some colored plates that must be placed in a particular order, is so difficult that the game will just tell you how to do it if you're stuck for too long. It's not bad for adventure games to include hints, but it would be better if the designers of The Ward had found some way to work them into the reality of the game. A second puzzle--requiring you to program a biological container to smuggle an artifact in your own body--is equally hard, and yet there's not a clue to be found in that case.
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The Ward (PC):
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