Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy is the remake of a late 90s classic.
Brought to you by Microïds, a small team from France with an intense hunger and passion for gaming, Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy comes through. And when a game comes from a developer behind the Agatha Christie series, it’s definitely worth trying out at the very least. Amerzone took Microïds around three years to make, starting with the unfortunate death of the legendary creator and director of the original game, Benoît Sokal.
In case you didn’t know, this game was initially released back in 1999, solely on the PC platform, and was designed by the late Benoît Sokal. In fact, this version is the remake of the classic 1999 game. And it’s based on a comic strip, L’Amerzone from the 1986 comic, Inspector Canardo, which was also created by Sokal. Plus, it’s now also available on console.
Now, one would hope that the game itself matches their ambition. Plus, because I’m into games like the iconic franchise of Uncharted, and a few months ago, with the release of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and how great and enjoyable that game was, this is definitely something I’d like to try out even more. A game that involves archaeological adventure is understandably so addictive for some people.
Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy takes you to the story of a young journalist who has been sent on an important but also dangerous mission to retrieve the final egg of the mythical “Great White Birds”. In order to do so, you must travel across the globe to find the core of a mysterious location. You’re guaranteed an exciting story that’s definitely full of a wild adventure. You’ll stumble upon a number of obstacles, such as the fun puzzles that you must solve to edge closer to your objective.
Before you start playing Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy, you’re given two choices of difficulty: Traveler and Adventurer. The traveler difficulty lets you have a more breathable and relaxing adventure, but at the same time, you’ll have moderately difficult puzzles to solve. You’ll be provided with more help and documents to aid you in your journey. You’ll also be given hints that’ll help you go much further.
As for the adventurer difficulty, you’ll have much more challenging puzzles, and you’re encouraged to experiment and make great use of exploration to improve your chances of solving them. Also, you’ll be provided with much less help and fewer resources to assist you. You’ll still be given hints, but they’ll be less clear than the former difficulty. In other words, you’ll need to rely more on your noggin. Moreover, for a more difficult challenge, you could turn off the hint system if you were to play on either difficulty.
This is one of those games where you can’t go wrong with either control. Whether you play with a mouse and keyboard or a controller is fine. Plus, if you’re used to playing on a controller, you could play with a mouse and keyboard, and you wouldn’t be disadvantaged that much. However, there are a few behaviours you can do with a controller, for example, being able to zoom in and out of your view of your surroundings.
Seeing as, for example, the only way to move around is to interact with the location you wish to go to. There is an icon that has an arrow that allows you to steer in the direction of your choice. Or, you can skip the movement by pressing the assigned button or clicking. Or if you really wanted to, you can automatically skip all movements altogether by simply modifying the game’s settings. Also, you’re fortunate that by default, there are some movements that can be skipped.
In Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy, when you approach certain interests, they allow you to examine them. However, there is a unique way to examine some objects, as there is an icon that allows you to perform specific actions. For example, one object I examined was a letter that was inside an envelope.
And by holding the required button and moving the left analog stick, you can drag the cursor to open the envelope and view its contents. Plus, holding the button allows you to rotate an object. Moreover, if you see an icon with a magnifying glass, you can view key information that will help with your campaign.
You can handle objects by taking total control of the majority of the mechanical elements within your surroundings. Whenever you see an icon with a hand in it, it means you hold and press a button, then move the analog in the direction you want. If you were playing with a mouse, the only difference is that you would need to move the mouse in the direction displayed.
One thing that you should check regularly to help you with your journey in Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy is the game’s journal. Inside, it contains different tabs that have every item and document you’ve gathered, as well as your objectives, progressive hints to help you solve them, and much more that are crucial for your campaign. Seriously, you must go through your journal, otherwise you’ll be stuck, regardless of what difficulty you’re playing on.
Another thing you get to do in Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy is conduct investigations. As you’re progressing through the story, you’ll stumble upon investigative information, which usually contains evidence that leads to unlocking more articles for your report. The good thing about this feature is that you don’t necessarily conduct these investigations, because they don’t truly derail your progress.
However, it’s best to complete them if you wish to discover and unlock additional content, which will pull you into the story’s secondary elements. So, take your pick, which would you rather do? I know what I’d do, and I did. By simply doing the investigations, they definitely improved the game’s experience. You should also know that investigations will always be recorded in a specific tab, allowing you to view them in your journal. On top of that, solving the investigations helps you uncover the secret of the mysterious White Birds.
Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy’s gameplay is quite fun, but I would like to do than just point and click. This was acceptable in PC gaming in the 1990s, but many players are accustomed to modern gaming mechanics. So, the developer couldn’t be more creative going about this remake? They could have done more with this game to keep up with the modern style of gaming, while still retaining its original mechanics.
If you compare the visuals of the late 90s to now, you’d obviously see a drastic difference in quality with Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy’s visuals. A modernized and almost photorealistic version with more vibrant colors and details, but still manages to maintain its survival setting and iconic appearance, if that makes sense. It looks much better and more detailed if you play in 4K, 1440p, or even 1080p.
Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy has done a good job of paying tribute to an iconic video game. It’s an exciting adventure that features an intriguing story, immersive puzzles, beautifully modernised graphics, and more. Despite its price, considering it’s simply a point-and-click game with a very outdated gameplay style, it’s best to wait for a sale to truly get your money’s worth.
