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Review: The Last Express

Official web page;Smoking Car Productions(creators);Broderbund(publishers).

Review written by Andrew Plotkin

Graphics
Lousy
Atmosphere
Very good
Plot
Superb
Dialog and writing
Phenomenal
Difficulty
Fairly hard
Interface
Pretty good
Gameplay
Very good (or, perhaps, a brilliant attempt that doesn'tcompletely succeed)
Forgiveness rating
You can easily get yourself into an unwinnableposition, often by decisions you didn't know were important at the time.However, the program automatically saves games for you, repeatedly andoften.

Those of you who know me, and who know this game, probably expect me tosay that The Last Express is the best graphical adventure gameI've ever played. Well -- as you should have guessed, matters are morecomplicated than that. :)

The best written game? Well, certainly. Unique? The onlygraphical game to even try doing what it does? The most interesting toreview? Yes, all of these, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

July 24, 1914. The Orient Express leaves Paris. It is three days toConstantinople; passing through Munich, Vienna, Budapest, and Belgradeon the way. This mess between Serbia and Austria is in all thenewspapers. The train doesn't stop for such trivia -- of course.

You're an American doctor, Robert Cath. You've missed the train, I'msorry to say; an old friend named Tyler Whitney cabled you to meet himin Paris, but you were... delayed. Fortunately, you're athletic enoughto board a speeding train in acrobatic style. Now you have to findWhitney without anyone realizing you lack a ticket. Which is the easypart.

Thus, the start of the story.

Here's what The Last Express is doing: there are twodozen passengers. Plus assorted conductors, cooks, waiters,engineers, and the trainmaster. (To say nothing of the dog.) All thesepeople have lives. They're all in constant motion. Some of their coursesintersect; some don't. You can interfere with events, eavesdrop on them,or ignore them. They'll happen anyway. It's probably impossible to catchevery event in a single pass through the game; you have toreplay sections to get the full effect.

Just for a sampling: an elderly Russian count travelling with his quietdaughter; an Austrian musician; a German industrialist; a Turkish harem,complete with fezzed guard; a pair of young women, English and French,unescorted; and Serbs and Slavs and English gentlemen and the mysteriousprivate car at the train's end... of course, that doesn't tell youanything. They all have stories.

If this sounds like a tremendously multithreaded plot -- yes. Precisely.On two levels, actually. There are several main branches the story cantake, depending on what you do. In the normal manner of adventure games,some branches leave you in some unsatisfying resolution; some get youstabbed or shot or blown up; exactly one gets you all the way toConstantinople, alive and more or less victorious.

But also -- and this is even more unusual, in graphical games -- there'stremendous variability possible within each branch. There are manyevents you can initiate. To the extent that they influence each other,they make major plot branches occur or not occur. To the extent thatthey don't, they can occur in any order. You see? Events areavailable, but you go through them at your own pace. (Mostly.)

This kind of variation is very familiar in its most trivial form, in thetext IF world. Consider: you can pick up objects, drop them, move themaround. A simplified physics model keeps track of everything. That's thebasic framework on which all the special cases and scripting of a gameare overlaid. That framework is the player's freedom of action -- thescope of the possible, to borrow a phrase. A game works whenthe interesting actions of the game lie within the scope of thepossible, without limiting it.

Graphical adventure games tend to make that scope extremely narrow: youmove freely, and you can bop the thing in front of you, but there are nomore axes than that. Objects can't be placed anywhere in the world, asthey can in text games. Why? Because rendering realistic images can't bedone in real time (currently :-). The game can't store images of everycombination of objects on the table, or in the corner, in every room. Ittakes enough space and too much, just covering the complete scope of thesingle axis that is available -- your location.

And this works, because it doesn't matter how big the scope ofthe possible is; what matters is whether it's complete. In Myst, you canstand just about everywhere and face in just about any direction, andthis only becomes annoying when there's an interesting corner that youwant to stand in and can't. But you can't drop objects anywhere. In Zork1, you can stand anywhere and drop any object in any room; but there'sno concept of facing a particular direction. Two different scopes, andtherefore two different kinds of games, but both more or less complete;both work.

If you'll pardon that didactic sideline, I'll return to the tra -- thesubject. In most graphical games, characters are as inflexibleas objects. You encounter a person in a specific location, so that theencounter only has to be rendered once. People don't walk around freely,because they would have to be filmed multiply in each path and fromevery viewpoint.

And The Last Express, with dozens of people in independentaction, pulls out a whole set of tricks to avoid this problem.

Consider again: it's a train. Narrow gauge rail, inherited fromRoman wagon ruts. A person can only walk directly towards you ordirectly away from you; and only up to the distance of a train-car. Filmthose, plus clips of the person slipping past you or walking through aside door, and you've covered that entire scope of the possible. (Asalways, exceptions can be added as necessary; but the basics are there.)There are only four common spaces: corridors (all identical), sleepingcompartments (ditto), the smoking room, the dining room. That's fourbackgrounds to any scene, at most. If you limit an event to (say) acorridor encounter, you only need one background, and it canstill occur anywhere down the length of the train, at any timein the game.

End

Trick two: simplify the graphics. The people you meet (and yourself, inthird-person cut scenes) are not fully rendered, or filmed fromlive actors. The art is, well, anime-like -- hand-drawn animationframes. (The PR hype says 'period Art Noveau style', which is weaselspeak for 'We know it doesn't look good, but there are reasons.' Theseare the reasons.) A few sequences are smoothly animated (rotoscoped fromlive actors), but most are still frames. Which doesn't lookgood -- but is the perfect medium, because those sequences and framescan be arbitrarily arranged. There's no lip-synching. Thedesigners can put in an entire conversation with three or four frames,alternating. A character can sit in one spot and read a newspaper for anhour, without either requiring an hour of video or becoming a statue.

By deliberately setting expectations low, the game can get away with ascope which flashier graphical games find simply impossible. Ok, I'mrepeating myself. One more example. If you were to film a bunch ofpeople going up and down a corridor, dodging each other, you could onlyuse it for that bunch in that sequence. Here, you'vegot the rotoscoped animation of people walking towards and away from you(and the Z-buffering is trivial, because they're all in a line, becauseit's a train). If one turns and enters a compartment, there's no smoothtransition. Animation ends, frame of person sideways, frame of personreaching for latch, frame of half-open door, slam. If two people passeach other, they pop through each other. And it's perfectly consistentwith the game's visual style; it doesn't break expectation.

What isn't in the game's scope?

Physical objects really aren't treated any better than in Myst.There aren't many, and you pretty much just accumulate them. You can'tdrop something anywhere it isn't needed. Interface is limited toclick-to-use, and sometimes click-to-use-on-that. But this isn't veryimportant, since the focus of the story is characters, not objects.

More seriously, you never have any control over what yourcharacter says. If you start talking with someone, the entireconversation is scripted. If someone starts talking to you, the same istrue, and you don't even have the opportunity to avoid it. Yourscope of possible action (which is different from the game'sscope of the possible, a distinction which I leave as an exercise forthe reader) consists mostly of going places to bump into people,initiating conversations with people, and sometimes handing objects topeople.

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(Mind you, this narrowness isn't a bad thing; as I said, scope doesn'thave to be wide, just complete. And this choice does have someinteresting consequences. One of the mysteries of The LastExpress is who you are, and how you got there. The answerscome out slowly over the course of the game, but not because you'reamnesiac or anything like that. You just don't like to talk aboutyourself. Since all the conversations are pre-designed, this works fine.And it leads to a much stronger characterization of the protagonist thanis usual in IF -- graphical or text games.)

Now, I've been quite fanatical about how brilliant all this is, so I'dbetter moderate that stance. (Complications, complications. Sorry.)

There are limits to the plot-branching. Without intelligentintervention (human or AI), no scope of action can be truly completeover a nontrivial plot. And when the scope is as narrow as this, therestrictions are very jarring. If a conversation is going on in the nextcompartment, you can eavesdrop, but you (usually) can't interrupt -- andthat means you just can't open the door. Or knock. Those hotspots aresimply turned off. You might find a master key, but it only opens doorsthat the designers want to let you open. Even if someone is ransackingyour compartment, if the game doesn't provide for an encounter,all you can do is stand outside.

Similarly. If you pass a person and there's no conversation to have, youcan't start one. Clicking on the person does nothing. Even if you thinkthe person would be fascinated to hear something you know -- or to seesomething you're holding. If it's not in the plot map, it's notpossible. 'Clang clang,' my friend said, watching me play, as I tried toreturn an incredibly valuable item to the person I'd stolen it from. Asshe wept to another character about its loss. In real life, one couldclang the damn thing against the door until she noticed. In this game,it wasn't an available option. You keep it; that's the storyline.

Whew. Enough about game design.

I haven't said much about the actual plot, and that's deliberate.There's far too much fun stuff to spoil it all. Just picture everythingthat might happen on a train... Since you're passing through Austria andSerbia on the eve of the Great War, it's not going too far to say thatpolitics is involved. Spies and revolutionaries; romance; the workingclass and the incredibly wealthy; excursions and alarums in the night.And the most luxurious travel experience in Europe.

The sense of place is remarkable. I have little interest in real-worldstories; it's science fiction and fantasy that usually turn my crank.But the Orient Express pulled me in, once I gave it a chance. All thosekinds of people. Casual chatter in English, French, Russian,German, Serbo-Croatian, and Turkish. (You know French, Russian, andGerman, so those conversations -- or eavesdrops -- are subtitled.)Conductors in each car who stand and say 'Bonjour' as you pass.Political discussions from the days when socialism was an ideal, not aParty. Everybody smokes. It's wacky.

And the writing itself -- well, it's nice to play a graphical game thatdoesn't read like a high-school writing workshop. The conversationswould make a fine period novel. Or movie; that can't be accidental, thatThe Last Express with no interactivity at all would still be aheck of a film. Romance, action, surprises, a sprinkling of humor. Thecharacters rely a bit much, perhaps, on stereotype -- the pompousGerman, the brooding fiery revolutionary, the sophisticated Parisian,the bluff cheery Englishman. And the tall, mysterious (even to you),handsome, sly, slightly untrustworthy, all-around movie hero of anAmerican. But they all turn out to have something to say. I wasastounded, counting characters for this review, that there were somany -- because they are all now so distinct in my mind. You'dthink two dozen people would be a faceless crowd. These are fellowtravellers.

And it was so much fun being that American.

I should complain about the action scenes for a bit. You get into a fewfights. The interface is simple; click on the enemy to strike, clickbehind yourself to duck back. Watch your opponent's moves, and reactquickly. They're very simple timing games. Not too hard -- buteach one took me a few tries to win. (Losing always ends the game.) Myreflexes aren't the twitchest, but I'm sure there are people who wouldhave real trouble with them. That's not good in an adventure game. Maybethere should be a difficulty preference, with the easiest modereally easy (or fully automatic.) On the other hand, the sceneswere about the right difficulty for me, and the pacingwould suffer without the interactivity. It's hard to say what's best.

I will complain about the save-game system. It's certainly anew approach. The game automatically saves itself at every plot juncture(conversations, getting important items, etc.) You can rewind to anyearlier saved game -- but you can't go forward again. Well,there's a thirty-second grace period during which you can. Just enoughtime to see where you are. But if you go back to an earlier position andplay any significant amount of game, you lose all your progress; theonly way forward is to replay everything. Hope you remember how you didit all.

The reasoning is obvious; you never have to fiddle with named positions,or keep track of a branching tree of saved games. And you never have toconsciously save a game at all. The program stores a linear chain ofgames. You select one by its time -- or, given the miraculousisotonicity of train-tracks, by the position of the train between Parisand Constantinople. And yes, there's a very nice interface for selectingthis, as the clock hands whirl around the face and the red line zigsacross the map.

But it's a great nuisance sometimes. You can't go back and try a quickvariation of the night before. I missed that sorely, sometimes. Andreplaying the game is slow. The first and worst objection tographical games. Even if you know what you're doing, even if you hitescape to abort cut scenes, there's just a lot of time involved playingThe Last Express. The first time through a segment, there's somuch to hear that it flies by. The seventh or ninth time, it getstedious. Sigh.

(Footnote: In fact, you can work around these restrictions. The programactually allows you to have six different saved-game chains. These arecolor-coded, and are stored as disk files called 'blue.egg', 'red.egg','green.egg', and so on. You can quit the game, duplicate a disk file,give the duplicate a different color-name, and restart. Both will thenbe available as entirely independent chains.)

How hard? I got severely stuck once. Asking for hints, I discovered thatI hadn't searched a room carefully enough. A common enough problem, inadventure games, but annoying nonetheless. Another puzzle yielded onlyto the 'try every object on everything visible' approach; I didn't knowwhy the correct object was correct until I saw the result.

There's a more general problem, which is unfortunately the realismproblem; you don't know what decisions are important until later. Youcan get stuck quite far down a plot branch that dead ends, because youdid something in the wrong order, much earlier. The dead-end branch mayeven be interesting, or half-satisfying. You may have several possibleendings available -- giving you the impression that you can win. Itain't always true.

(When you die or reach an unsatisfactory ending, the game tries torewind you to a save point from which you can win. But this isnot guaranteed. Even if it does work, the winning pathavailable from that point may be quite difficult; you may have to windback farther before you actually find a way to win.)

And I spent much time in flail mode. That is to say, wandering up anddown the train, waiting to hear or see something interesting. Or hopingthat a conductor would turn aside, so I could sneak into a room. (Theydon't let you break into random compartments or enter the baggage car.But if the conductor is away from his seat, or if there's some othercharacter blocking his view, you can get away with more.) A lot of thegame is this kind of irritating little timing issue; not ideal.Realistic, perhaps, as I said. But too much of it.

This review has gotten very, very long.

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In short:If you have any interest in graphical IF, you should play The LastExpress. For the sheer chutzpah of it all, if nothing else. It ateseveral multi-hour play sessions, much longer than the usualgame; and if some of that time was dull, much more of it was filled withfascinating, creative, and damn-right entertaining narrative.

Availability: This is a 1997 game, but on-line CD-ROM shops should haveit, and at a reduced price. It's a Mac-PC hybrid game.

System requirements: Any PowerMac, System 7.1.2 or later, 9 megs freeRAM, 2x CD drive, thousands of colors. (4x CD recommended.)

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Macintoshness: Not particularly. It uses a large software cursor, sothere's mouse jerkiness you don't expect on a Mac. And the save systemdoesn't prompt you for files at all, so it doesn't use standard Macdialog boxes. No menu bar either.

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Interesting Footnote: The designer is Jordan Mechner, whose firstcomputer game of fame was 'Karateka'.

Game Details:

Welcome to the “Desperados” for Mac game page. This page contains information + tools how to port this game so you can play it on your Mac just like a normal application. This page contains information + tools how to port Desperados – Wanted Dead or Alive so you can play it on your Mac just like a normal application using Crossover. So if you haven’t Crossover yet, then sign up here and buy the program or if you want to test it first, for the 14 days trial. Or use the Porting Kit alternative.

If you don’t own the game yet, get Desperados – Wanted Dead or Alive from GOG.com which is DRM free there and runs out of the box. Click on the links mentioned here, create an account using the signup in the top bar on the GOG.com website and buy the game. You automatically get when creating an account 14 free GOG games (+ some dlc’s) added to your account so you have nothing to loose, only to receive!

This is the first episode of the 3 Desperados games. Desperados 2: Cooper’s revenge and Desperados 3: Helldorado have even a 3D feature in it and both are ported to the Mac too!!

Use this CrossTie… to install the GOG game into Crossover
Make sure Crossover is installed before downloading/running the CrossTie. Or use Porting Kit.

Important: The game is one little glitch an option is black but when hovering over it, it will become visible. For the rest it runs awesome!

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Game description:
Bounty hunter John Cooper pays a visit to the local Twinnings & Co manager offering to end the railroad company’s problems once and for all. He gathers together a gang of his old partners and declares war on the bandidos. But during his pursuit, which will take him through half of the southwestern United States, Cooper soon discovers that on this mission nothing is quite what it seems…

Additional Port Information:
Graphical Cards Tested: AMD Radeon 6770M, Nvidia Geoforce GT 640M
Whats tested: Playing campaign for a bit
Does Multiplayer work?: No tested
OSX 10.7.5 and 10.8.2+ compatible?: yes
Known Issues: See “important” note above
Whats not tested: Intel graphical cards
Wrapper Version: 1.0
icon: Daviantart.com