Famous Five 5 -
Secret Mission M.A.G.-X
Release date: 09/2001
Developer: Novatrix
Publisher: Ravensburger
Enid Blyton
A review by slydos 31st October 2001
Famous
Five 5 - Secret Mission M.A.G.-X is the fifth
game of the adventure series after the books of Enid Blyton for ages 7 and up. Just like
in the other 4 games the location is Kirrin house and its surroundings and Kirrin
island. While the
five friends, George, Ann, Dick, Julian and Timmy the dog are wondering if there will be
any exciting things happening during their holidays, they could watch a plane crashing
with clouds of smoke onto Kirrin Island. A new mission for the Famous Five begins. |
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Click on pictures to magnify
Kirrin house |
| The installation of the game from
one CD (about 80 MB on hard disk are required) makes problems contrary to the 4
predecessors. Neither on a Pentium II 233 with
Windows 95 nor on a Pentium III 850 with Windows ME the game is ready to play after
installation. With both computers the opening sequence is aborted and you'll be pushed
back to Windows. Under Windows ME you are able to resume the game after an error message
however. Since both, the older and the newer computer, correspond to the system minimum
requirements, I tried installation on the older computer again.
A not-documented configuration file on the CD allowed me to
switch off a "Multi-thread-cursor" - whatever may be hidden behind that.
Afterwards the game functions until the end sequence, where it crashed again, without
additional return to the system surface. However our characters move unusually slow and
glitching, although actually in relation to the earlier games nothing world-moving changed
in graphics, surface and handling. The locations remained the same, speech sounds quite
similar and also short keys and other handling did not change in relation to Famous Five
4.
What
urges the developers thus to make noticeable fundamental modifications in the program is
veilful to me. Anyhow it is the first game of the series, which showed installation and
performance difficulties.
Away from the technique - what does this new game
bring us contentwise? The story starts exciting: an aircraft crashing, a pilot on a secret
mission, a mysterious man...
In 3rd person perspective we
accompany our heroes in this mouse-controlled 2D-adventure. The dialogues -
professionally expressed - usually run
automatically, so at the beginning or every time our
heroes appear at a new scene. One can stop them
with the escape-key. The free choice of a
dialogue partner is very
rare and already belongs to the puzzle part of the game.
Also the main character, who carries the inventory and must execute acute actions, is determined automatically. It's either George or Dick, the other two characters Ann and
Julian are company and deliver some comments from time to time. The same with Timmy, the dog. In the earlier parts of the series Timmy barked at least
here and there, when you clicked on him or one of the
other characters delivered a comment. Not so in part 5. When clicking on them, the other children remain mute, not
even showing Julian's name with a text bar while crossing with the
mouse pointer.
There's not much to do for the gamer - after one of the automatic
dialogues, in which they usually speak quite clearly about what to do next, the
concerning character can go to another scene or also execute an action, e.g. take up an
object. Names of objects or persons appear when the mouse comes near.
However one cannot take such marked objects at once
to the inventory, but must wait, until it's their turn in the game process. Only then
taking up is possible. Example: On the clearing the friends find a injured man. Not far
away you see some branches, which cannot be taken however the are displayed. Only after
finishing the dialogues "... we must help him ... the leg must be splinted... best we
to take some branches..." one can actually remove the branches. This is how freedom
of decision is limited. There were not so much restrictions in earlier games. Thus also
the quantity of objects at the same time available in the inventory is small, since
you can only take up objects really needed and must use them directly again. You can open
the rucksack-inventory with one click on the active character, George or Dick. The huge
inventory will then cover nearly the whole screen. There are still two puzzles deviating
from this pattern, which require a little own thinking. All in all even for a seven year
old this is not a great challenge but more an interactive story.
Who has already played Famous Five 4 - Dangerous Discovery, the best game of the
series with puzzles, that requires a lot more thinking, will probably be disappointed by
the newest game. Compared to it the almost pure spectator existence in Famous Five 5 makes
few fun.
You also can play the entire game in the English
version or just switch between languages.You only have to click in the bottom right corner
of the screen on the German flag and speech and text changes to English. If you click on
the English flag, you can change again into German. logical, isn't it? Here one can
improve one's English vocabulary and language understanding. A capital feature.
Famous Five 5 has marvelous, detailed background graphics,
which already could be admired in the four predecessors. In part 5 no new scene was added.
However the quality of the characters has worsened as their movements are blurred.
However if you have any problems solving the puzzles
despite the small degree of difficulty, you can use the also installed help files in
German or English language. There are graduated hints up to the solution of individual
tasks.
If you want to move a bit faster from scene to scene,
you can click on the compass on the left lower corner of the screen to choose another
location. Likewise on the bottom left you can find the options menu. With F1 you can go to
the main menu to load and save. Deviating from the first 3 games of the Famous-Five
series, you can only save your game with a text description without any image of the
actual screen.
Total gaming time is about 4 hours - a bad
cost-performance ratio.
Result:
I cannot really recommend to buy the game. Especially
because there are some better existing examples of the same series. The few decision
possibilities condemn the gamer to be a spectator, the technical problems do their rest.
Unfortunately not a single new location was added. The fifth part of the series shows
fatigue symptoms of the developers and is probably rather a game for Enid Blyton
collectors. I would recommend all other gamers to play the first 4 games of the series and
at the best part 4 which has surely double game time and more difficult puzzles.
Additionally some other recommendable adventures have been released, Here for
example you can find a new Review
about "Julias Zeitreise".
My Rating: 46%
Adventure-Archiv-rating system: 80% - 100% excellent game, very recommendable
70% - 79% good game, recommendable
60% - 69% satisfactory, restricted
recommendable
50% - 59% sufficient (not very
recommendable)
40% - 49% rather deficient (not to
be recommended - for Hardcore-Adventure-Freaks and collectors only)
0% - 39% worst
(don't put your fingers on it)
System requirements:
- Windows 95/98/2000/NT 4.0 or higher
- Pentium 166 Mhz or higher
- 32 MB RAM
- Graphic card 24 bit
- 16bit Soundcard
- 8x CDROM-drive
Played on:
- Windows 95
- PII 233 MHz
- 64 MB RAM
- 4 MB Graphic card
- 16bit Soundcard
- 24x CDROM-drive
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Bottom right you can choose your language
Going to Kirrin Island
How to help the pilot?
You can choose English Speech and Texts
Not much choice here
George und Dick convince the Lighthouse guard
The old wreck in front of Kirrin Island
Can Dick free the prisoners?
You can only store the title of the savegame
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