This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
Young archaeologist Alabama Smith is asked by his professor Dean Staples to study an ancient amulet that comes from Pompeii in Italy. Upon more investigation Alabama discovers the amulet is still linked to the past during Pompeii’s biggest historical disaster. He gains help from the daughter of a mysterious gentleman but they soon find themselves pursued by people who will stop at nothing to gain the amulet’s time travel capabilities for their own ends. It’s up to you help our hero Alabama travel across archaeological digs and reassemble the amulet while making sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Pompeii’s past and future is counting on you!
Nothing annoys me more than when a game developer tires to create their own version of a popular character. Sure, sometimes it works out okay but in most cases you end up with an inferior copy of something better. As is the case with Alabama Smith in Escape from Pompeii (2008), developed by Alawar Stargaze. They knew they couldn’t get the Indiana Jones licence so they renamed the lead character…Alabama Smith? I mean couldn’t Alawar Stargaze gone for something a little less obvious??? Here our hero along with his female companion (thanks to some wonky and stilted animation) travel across archaeological digs to find parts of an amulet. To be honest the main characters are pretty cardboard and uninteresting. Not so much a HOG as a HOPA since while you need to find hidden items you spend most of the time finding which item to use on what in order to make something work. The actual Escape from Pompeii doesn’t happen until the last quarter of the game so those hoping for a lot of time travel will be disappointed. When you do make it to Pompeii at least you have the option of going back and forth between past and present to affect things so that’s nice yet it happens way too late in Escape from Pompeii. It’s a short game. This is all broken up with simple puzzles but a series of rounds of forced spot the difference. Apparently it’s incredibly important after every room you put everything back exactly as you found it, even items you never took in the first frickin place! You’re an archaeologist not a janitor, why would you have to do this? It’s frankly boring. It tries to expand an already short game but does it in the silliest way possible. The last puzzle involving obtaining a code pushes the difficulty curve way too far and as your hint system is useless here I had to refer to a walkthrough, it was a difficult puzzle. There are two difficulty modes but I’m pretty sure the only difference between them is how long it takes for the hint system to replenish. The game rewards you with a score system where the more correct clicks you make the bigger the score, whereas the more you click everything randomly (as you’ll do) the bigger chance you’ll lose your score. It’s a nice idea not implemented well due to some poor hot spot click detection.
Alabama Smith in Escape from Pompeii ends on a cliffhanger, no doubt because the developers knew they could squeeze out another game with this character, which makes it difficult to recommend this title as it’s only the first part. There’s also the short length, nonsense spot the difference puzzles and wooden characters. A knockoff is always going to be a knockoff but what I’m disappointed with is Alawar didn’t use their Pompeii concept for something more involving than a treasure hunt containing repetitive game design.… Expand
