Traitor's Gate (Mac)

Rating:
Summary: Traitor's Gate Rocks
Review: Traitor's Gate is just about my favorite game ever. It has awesome graphics, a fully admersive 3-D world, and is just challenging anough to make you think before you make a decision, but not so challenging that you will have to go back to a saved game a billion times before you figure out the puzzle you are working on.
If you like 1st person games that look incredibly realistic, are challenging, and make you wish you WERE the person the game is about, then you will really love this game!

Rating:
Summary: Tedious and Pointless
Review: _Traitor's Gate_ has the dubious honour in my book of being the one single game that I have not been able to get through. It simply did not hold my interest.

Right from the get-go I had trouble believing in this game. The premise is that you have to break into the Tower of London and replace the crown jewels with replicas containing tracking devices, so that whe the person who REALLY intends to steal the crown jewels does so, the US government can hunt him down. I just couldn't believe that the US would waste its time and energy on this kind of covert affair, when a warning phone call to the British government would accomplish as much.

Even given the premise, I found it completely unbelievable how ill-equipped you were to complete this "mission." For example, the only lock-pick in your accessories is one that will only open certain types of locks and the only map you're given is a GPS. Okay, not having a decent lock-pick sets you up to puzzle out how to get through doors etc. in other ways, but it also means that you are often forced into leaving traces behind, something you are warned not to do and judged for later. This did not make any sense to me.

In this game you are supposed to be sneaky, but there is no option to actually sneak or look around corners, or anything that would be remotely helpful in that regard.

There were many puzzles that I simply could not get to work: keys that did not function as they were supposed to and so forth. Also, there was a lot of pixel hunting. When things did work, you had to find the exact minute spot to click to make it function. Often there was no intimation, short of a walk-through, that you could actually accomplish anything in a given area. So gameplay for me consisted mainly of wandering around a lot and getting captured. There's only so much of that I can take.

The environmental graphics were lovely, but there's better ways to explore the Tower.

People seem either to love this game or hate it. If you have any question as to which you might be, save your money.

Rating:
Summary: Tedious and Pointless
Review: _Traitor's Gate_ has the dubious honour in my book of being the one single game that I have not been able to get through. It simply did not hold my interest.

Right from the get-go I had trouble believing in this game. The premise is that you have to break into the Tower of London and replace the crown jewels with replicas containing tracking devices, so that whe the person who REALLY intends to steal the crown jewels does so, the US government can hunt him down. I just couldn't believe that the US would waste its time and energy on this kind of covert affair, when a warning phone call to the British government would accomplish as much.

Even given the premise, I found it completely unbelievable how ill-equipped you were to complete this "mission." For example, the only lock-pick in your accessories is one that will only open certain types of locks and the only map you're given is a GPS. Okay, not having a decent lock-pick sets you up to puzzle out how to get through doors etc. in other ways, but it also means that you are often forced into leaving traces behind, something you are warned not to do and judged for later. This did not make any sense to me.

In this game you are supposed to be sneaky, but there is no option to actually sneak or look around corners, or anything that would be remotely helpful in that regard.

There were many puzzles that I simply could not get to work: keys that did not function as they were supposed to and so forth. Also, there was a lot of pixel hunting. When things did work, you had to find the exact minute spot to click to make it function. Often there was no intimation, short of a walk-through, that you could actually accomplish anything in a given area. So gameplay for me consisted mainly of wandering around a lot and getting captured. There's only so much of that I can take.

The environmental graphics were lovely, but there's better ways to explore the Tower.

People seem either to love this game or hate it. If you have any question as to which you might be, save your money.