Aveyond: Gates of Night game review

Rating: 2/5

Picture the ancient Legend of Zelda game for Nintendo. Now picture a one-dimensional little girl with black hair walking around a one-dimensional castle battling one-dimensional beings. That's Aveyond - Gates of Night. Aveyond is a questing, role playing game boasting over 60 quests and over 30 hours of gameplay. IF you can stand playing for that long.

You can use either your mouse or keyboard to maneuver through the fantasy land. The controls are simple: up, down, left, right. When it comes to fighting, changing the character's clothes and eating, things get a bit trickier. Press escape to view the menu, click on the category, such as items or battle, then click what you want to do. If you accidentally press escape or right click the game screen, the menu will pop up. After a while that becomes really annoying.

The game starts with a tutorial, which is helpful when it comes to figuring out what to do with all the menu options. Once you start questing, it feels as if you are left out to dry with absolutely no help and no real clue as to where to go.

The graphics are simple. The main character, Mel, looks like a paper figure cut out and pasted onto the background. I think the old Atari games had better graphics than Aveyond. The entire world of Aveyond looks like something a seven-year-old would draw.

The play screen is very small, but there is no way to maximize the window. The tiny world would be much easier to see if the play screen were a bit larger.

At first the triumphant, adventurous music is kind of cute. It sort of reminded me of a medieval-themed action movie. After a while, however, the music gets really annoying. The same three minutes of music is looped over and over, begging you to turn off the sound. The characters don't speak audibly, either. You have to click through their words and there is no way to skip the small talk.

The story line of Aveyond - Gates of Night is plotted and thought out very well. The storyline would make a great fantasy book. However, the storyline is far too apparent throughout gameplay. There is too much lore woven into the story, the unavoidable talking bits, that it makes it more difficult to simply enjoy playing the game.

Buy Aveyond: Gates of Night sells for $6.99. The game is worth buying if

... You want to play a game that has a well-developed story behind it

... You enjoy simple role-playing games

... You have $7 you don't know what to do with

Don't buy the game if

... You have ever played a game with awesome graphics

... You are too impatient to click through all of the talking

... You want a challenge