The Arrival

Adventure 1997 Windows Live Interactive Humorous

Better than the movie

This little known game is actually based on the equally obscure (and rather poor) movie starring Charlie Sheen, but unlike its inspiration, it's quite decent and provides some entertaining sci-fi thrills. In the movie, an alien race discovered the Earth and attempted to take it over by modifying the environment to suit them, but were foiled in their plan by Mr Sheen. The game picks up the story ten years later and sees the return of the aliens and who have kidnapped you. It's your job to escape and put an end to their plans. This takes the form of a first person adventure game where you have complete freedom of movement and which mostly involves exploring various environments set across a spaceship, a moon and several planets. The main focus of the game is on puzzle solving, each of which is appropriately themed and which require the appropriate items to solve them or which involve seeking out details within the environment. The whole thing is open ended, so you are free to explore as you wish, and there are several different endings to unlock and which depend on your actions. For the most part, this is a fun adventure. The environments and cutscenes are well done, with a lot of detail and which are highly atmospheric. The aliens themselves however are a little laughable and reduce the drama somewhat, which is disappointing. The puzzles are well integrated and are for the most part challenging and enjoyable to solve without being frustrating. There are minor issues with things like the inventory system, while death does occur a lot due to the requirement for trial and error in the exploration, but this remains a surprisingly enjoyable Myst-style adventure.

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