As part of reminiscing of Lobotomy and their games, I have dug up and translated few articles from old Slovak and Czech magazines. The very first review is from, now non-existent, game magazine RIKI, so I hope you enjoy it.
When I grabbed Exhumed and saw the box, I´ve
thought: another Doom shooter clone (or Duke shooter?). Enough
already. Graphics typically Duke like, no 3D models. It looks like
an Egyptian environment... Hm. After ten minutes of playing: Jesus
Christ, curse all the spiders! It´s only the first level and I am
having small troubles. Difficulty can´t be changed and is pretty
decent. Level is too big, you can´t save, the enemies are
tough... Hmmm, but I like the music... After two days of playing: O,
great Re, Tefnut, Geb-earth and Nut-sky, o Usire, Eset, Nebthet and
Sutech, o, Horus, o Hathor, forgive me, that I, am only an earthly
worm, which dared to doubt even for a moment about a game, which is a
celebration of your immortality, celebration of eternal sands of
Sahara, where every grain represents one human soul, ruled over by
you. Forgive me, and you, o, highest god of sun Re, return even this
morning from your journey in the underworld, so that the rising
sun would persuade me that in your great power you can still
forgive.
Enough of chat, I will inform you how fantastic
Exhumed trully is, though it might not seem like that at first. I
won´t start with technical execution, graphics or sounds, but I´ll
spit out immediately the most important and gigantic thing which
Exhumed has: atmosphere. Atmosphere of this game is something so
perfect, heavy, emotionally impactful and colourful, that words are
not enough to describe it. You will be walking inside thousand years
old temples full of mumies, and mostly fantastic decorations,
vases, paintings, hieroglyphs. That all with a regard for a
monumental architecture, which makes you feel, even though you are
the main hero, for which the faith of mankind depends on, even though
you will be fearfully kiling enemies with your weapons, you will
still feel small and unimportant. Even though you are cutting with a
machette the strings of the original inhabitants, the buildings
remain. Remains also gold, paintings and the old culture, which is
indestructible. The majestic columns benevolently gaze over at
doings of some man with knowledge, that he will leave soon and will
leave them to rest maybe for another thousands of years. That´s all
for the atmosphere. Graphics, as I mentioned, are very compelling,
mostly in decorations. You can have resolution of 320x200 and
640x480.
In the next paragraph, I will deal with music - music
in Exhumed is a gem, which has no comparison - I have tried to
remember any game, which had such brilliant connection between
atmosphere and what´s happening on screen, with what´s coming from
the speakers. Beautiful egyptian motives, old instruments, mysterious
sounds, all together tied together with vangelis art of combination
of sounds and melodies. Some of the music is made with maximum
emphasis on the before mentioned atmosphere. The track begins with
desert wind, croaking of crows (or are they vultures?), then there is
a gong, followed by a sound of a freed stone rolling down an old
staircase, short brumming of monks, and finally after that, a short
melody. The whole thing is just fantastic and even it doesn´t reach
the eeriness of Boceeli´s Rapsodia - who likes this kinda of style,
will be drooling so much and for very long (I am for example
connected to an artificial nourishment, because my organism
can´t efficiently manage water - everything is being transformed
into slobber, which is dripping slowly, very slowly down my chin to
the carpet. And why is that? Because I have CD of Exhumed stuck in my
drive and listening to music!).
Gameplaywise Exhumed is up to standarts as well. Alas, there are only seven weapons, but are (certain ones) very original. From a traditional revolver, M60, flamethrower and grenades there are also two others which fascinated me; firstly it´s a snake staff, from which a cobra flies out after shooting, seeking out the nearest enemy (if it doesn´t find anything, it will bite you too), and the second one is the genius bracelet of god Ra, which can summon a storm cloud with a lightning, killing any enemy in one hit. Enemies are also atmospheric: from some sort of henchmen of god Ra, to mumies, to some sort of fire dragons. All of the enemies are pretty tough and so don´t expect a pistol would kill anybody in one hit. The game´s system is also pretty interesting - you finally CANNOT shoot underwater, you can fill your oxygen from plants, to which it´s bound to and the deal with saving - it doesn´t exist. You have to find a gold scarab and when you are killed, you are starting by it. At the beginning you have three lives, over time you will get more (or more likely you will lose all of them). Hehe, when I think about that at the beginning I had no idea what to write, it´s hilarious. I think, that I have described this unique game, which just like Quake builds upon atmosphere and mystery. The game does this brilliantly. Gong."
Lion
(Originaly published in Slovak in RIKI, no. 29, excerpt taken from www.oldgames.sk)
More reviews of Exhumed coming soon (including my own).
