Retro Review - Heart Of Darkness

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In the video game industry it is not at all strange to find a large list of games that are few known or have no merit, the reasons why many of these games go unnoticed is due to several factors ranging from : that the year of its release was overshadowed by other games or the classification of said game will limit the purchase in the public and therefore be lost among the large number of titles that come out a year, but regardless of the factor, many of These games that are in the shadow of others, are very good and deserve recognition, like the game below.

Today's Retro Review is about: Heart Of Darkness.

Our main character is Andy, he is a very intelligent and very creative child, capable of making useful and in some cases dangerous inventions, but our little protagonist suffers from phobia of darkness (a phobia that I also suffered when I was a child), and one day while he was in class at his school, he fell asleep and was surprised by his teacher, who did not hesitate to punish him by locking him in a totally dark closet (If that teacher does that today he would be imprisoned), so before the professor locked him up, Andy took advantage of his teacher's distraction to escape, thus escaping the punishment and of the school, is that imagine that you are afraid of the dark and they want to lock you in a closet. After fleeing from school, Andy heads to the meadow with his faithful canine companion, Whiskey, but suddenly one of the rarest events in the world happens: a solar eclipse and what could be one of the best events that can be observe, it becomes a nightmare for our protagonist and his dog, since out of nowhere, a strange creature appears as a shadow and kidnaps Whiskey, taking it to another world.

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As expected Andy will not let them take his pet so easy, so he returns home to equip himself to rescue him. Andy is equipped with his laser gun (Yes, Andy is a boy who built his own laser gun, I do not explain myself as he did, but hey, it's a video game) and his spaceship (Well, it also has a spaceship, I do not even wonder how he did it). Now ready with his rescue team, Andy goes to save his dog that is in a world full of darkness, the greatest fear of our protagonist.

And so, in a few words is the story of Heart Of Darkness, which as you will realize is not a story of the most developed and structurally plot, but it is a game that in terms of gameplay is quite fun.

Heart Of Darkness is one of the best graphics games that can be found on the old but beloved PlayStation 1. The scenarios of this game are pre-rendered, something quite common in many games of that time, since by using this method the developers managed to create scenarios with better details in view and also improve the performance of the game itself, as is known, the PlayStation 1 had problems to work fully with games that had many polygons and, using this technique improved the performance in a great quantity, that is why we can find a great variety of scenarios with their respective details that differentiate them from of others.

This game has a pretty dark color level and it has a lot to do with the plot of the game itself, but I remember when I first played Heart Of Darkness, it reminded me of another pretty good game and, that in regards to the graphical aspect, also it is characterized to have good graphs, the game of which I am speaking to him is: Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, in terms of graphics they have great similarities, but in Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee you can see a graphical improvement, however this does not make Heart of Darkness an inferior game, at all, I'm only making a small comparison because in terms of graphs have certain similarities in the use of colors. Another important point of this game are the animations of our protagonist, Andy is able to make a lot of animations quite fluid and natural, in such a way that it gives a certain aspect of realism to our character and somehow feels that it is a "alive" character, to put it in some way and not a flat character, as far as animation is concerned.

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The sound section of Heart Of Darkness does a good job, since the melodies for this game were composed for its main purpose, which is to accompany the player during his adventure and that together with the setting of the stage create a show not only visual, but also auditory, in simple terms: the music that we can find in Heart Of Darkness is appropriate for each scenario of the game, where in most cases they are environmental melodies.

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Regarding the playable aspect Heart Of Darkness is a platform game with puzzles, where we will have to go from stage to stage eliminating our enemies, or at least eliminate them at first, since after spending some time using the laser gun , eliminating every shadow that attacks us, this weapon will be stripped, leaving us, in a certain sense, helpless. However, Andy is able to run, jump and climb, in such a way that using these skills will allow us to dodge those enemies that do not allow us to advance, for this we must think carefully about our escape strategy since with a minimum error, our character will die, and this game does not have life bar, but our character dies instantly when attacked by an enemy, but this game has infinite lives, so by that aspect, there is no problem.

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The control of our character is quite simple, jump, run, climb and even swim is quite easy to control, something very typical in platform games, but Heart Of Darkness has a curve of difficulty that, in some cases becomes very complicated and therefore it will make us repeat many of the scenarios due to its great difficulty. However after learning the patterns of each enemy and the ways of being able to dodge or eliminate them in the best way is a game that in terms of duration is quite short, but it is a pretty fun game.

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Heart Of Darkness is one of the gems that we can find in the old but dear PlayStation 1, a title that, without wanting to seem exaggerated, I consider it a cult game and a game highly recommended for all lovers of this genre.

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