In this day and age of technology and communications, it’s rare for an informed gamer to find that a bad game has made it through the numerous media and fan reviews out there and into their hands. Unfortunately, this is something that even I fell victim to this time. On paper, Mata Hari is passable enough, it’s an adventure game with a story based upon a historical figure and design pedigree coming from 2 ex-LucasArts vets but this title fails basic fundamentals 101.

Adventure titles are based around a core of characters/scripting, puzzles and interface. Sure, Mata Hari herself is interesting but her interactions with characters across the board lack continuity and credence. I’ve just ruined your experiment a minute ago but now you’re all calm and willing to help me? I just revealed that I’m a spy for another country but you’re still talking to me about your state secrets just because I my character has tits? Maybe the latter is more believable but continuity issues like this abound. Interaction is dumbed down to a few options that you can enquire about based upon what you’ve seen in the game. While I appreciate speeding up the interface but it also makes the game extremely linear. When you can’t proceed, you know you need to find a certain dialogue trigger which is often in the same area the puzzle originates in, hardly difficult. Besides dialogue, puzzles take the form of the usual inventory ones and rerouting circuits type of head scratchers. Besides the final one, I didn’t have a tough time with them.

Now what separates this one from the pack and makes it extremely irritating is the use of the dreaded mini games. I always cringe when I see these as it’s a clear sign that the developer didn’t know how to implement a better design and has to waste your time by doing these but wait! In this game, they give you the option to just skip them. So, why would I even bother and much less, why did them put them in? The only way to get the best ending is to max out the stats with the points you get from them. Grudgingly, I played through them. Mini game #1 is a incredibly poorly designed rhythm game involving 4 circles and moving the mouse cursor near the center of it & touch each note as it passes through. Missing a note will cost you dearly and the level curve increases dramatically. Seeing how an analog device like a mouse is extremely sensitive, you can imagine just how frustrating this exercise can become. I literally spent hours on the last few to master them and then find that I could choose the earlier easier dances to mine stat points. Mini game #2 involves the train system between countries. Moving about requires evading enemy agents who follow you around board game like map. These are quite easy once you get an understanding of how the pieces work but quickly become repetitive as you need to it 40 some times to mine enough points. Mini game #3 involves pixel hunting backgrounds for any kind of information. Now, many games in this genre are clearly guilty of this one but having to randomly travel to every available location with the train mini game in the middle is just plain annoying.

It’s been a very very long time since I felt a game production was a waste of time but this one takes the award for worst design in recent memory. Outside of some nicely designed set pieces and musical themes, there is nothing worthwhile in this title. Good thing Cranberry Production learned its lesson and dropped the ex-Lucas guys for their next release which I’ll opine over soon enough.

Ugh…that very much sums how I feel about this absolute embarrassment of a sequel to The Sands of Time. Warrior Within takes everything that its predecessor did well and throws it out the window. Gone is the cartoony look and ingenious maps replaced with a drab desolate look paired with grunge music and a different set of voice actors. In the Japanese version, the Prince is voiced by the same actor as Solid Snake which really isn’t the best fit as the character just isn’t that old…

Combat drags on and on as enemies have huge amounts of HP but you can use the moves to just keep knocking them down over and over while slowly whittling away their life bar until you can move on. What’s the use of all of these combo strings when you only need 2-3 of them?! Clearly, the designers didn’t think of that or the logical level design of being able to travel through time in the same set of stages. Unbelievably, there are bugs with the time travel puzzles which cause the game to be unbeatable as certain flags aren’t set correctly for you to move forward. Fortunately, I have a  habit of keeping multiple save points so I was able to wade out of this QA nightmare and finish the game with both endings.  I really have to reiterate just how amazing the drop in quality is from its predecessor. There is absolutely nothing that this sequel does better and is a clear example that UBI needs to shame their QA team with. For those playing the Japanese version like me, it is patched over the Western and Asian revs but loses the XBOX Live time trials so you can pick your favorite poison, more bugs, better voices or less bugs, out of place voices. Either way, you’ll get a perfect example of how not to make a sequel to a critically acclaimed masterpiece.