Traitors Gate

The core team that created TG is surprisingly small. Here is a team of half a dozen dedicated people, with a collective passion for creating well constructed intellectually challenging games. TG is remarkable emersive and will keep you thinking and pondering long after you've closed your computer for the night.

The storyline is simple: You are a top American operative who accepts a mission from a secret department in the Pentagon. Your code name is RAVEN.

Major D.G. Anderson, head of the European desk for ORPHIA, has defected taking with him a number of classified files. It is suspected that he will use the information in order to steal the British Crown Jewels, thus causing an extremely damaging international incident.

Your mission inside the Tower Of London is to replace the threatened regalia with replicas which have been fitted with tracking systems. It is hoped that when Anderson makes his daring heist, your replacements will lead the Pentagon security [PIAD] to him and his accomplices.

Just as in "Safecracker" [Daydream's previous game], you are working in a first-person, real-time environment and have a strict time limit. You must complete your mission within twelve hours. I really hate time limit games - but fear not. It is perfectly possible to complete this mission in about six hours.

Traitors Gate is spread over 4 CD-ROMs and runs on the dreaded node system. Again, everything has been expertly handled. Each stopping place has been rendered to an exceptionally high degree of realism and graphically TG is stunning. Locations range from damp and dank Victorian sewers to elegant bedrooms to efficient, well ordered offices. Exterior locations are particularly well handled. Realism is further enhanced by 360 degree turning at each stop and by full axis movement both up and down.

This has been labelled a role-playing game [by those people who need labels on everything], mostly because you take on the persona of Raven. He certainly doesn't have a developed personality like Duke Nukem or Lara Croft and never speaks to you as does Duke, or Garratt in Thief: The Dark Project. There are no stats to worry about either and you don't have to feed Raven every few steps [a huge blessing in my book].

Like most adventure gamers I really, really hate dying every five minutes, so here's the good news: apart from a couple of exceptions, you won't die...you may however get caught a lot! You use a lamp quite a lot too. It comes ready-fitted with batteries and doesn't suddenly give up after an hour in use, like some rpgs I've played.

Unusually for a game of this kind it is remarkably non-linear. The reason is simple: All major locations, and there are loads of them, are all cunningly linked by the sewers beneath the Tower of London. This gives scope for many different exits, which in turn creates a rabbit warren of passages and corridors, with a web of sewer passages and access routes. The best part is that you can actually experience most of them first hand in a first person perspective.

Sound effects are totally appropriate and the music is reminicent of James Bond and that special breed of 60's spy films. It works perfectly.

While my gaming skills may not be wonderful, I look a lot for continuity, and have a keen eye for detail. I've found remarkably few inconsistencies in TG. Sure, I can see the odd line or seam that should have been retouched but this is chicken feed compared to some games I've played. The graphics and segments of fmv have been superbly woven together.

There's no point playing a game of running around an environment steeped in English history and not expect it to deliver on historical facts. Rest assured Daydream have done you proud. Their research has unearthed a wealth of accurate historical detail about the Tower of London and the individual items that make up the crown regalia itself. Even nicer, you can play most of the game without all this info screaming in your face for attention. It's all very subtle and has been handled with great care.

Naturally, I don't want to give plot secrets or surprises away so I'll conclude by saying again: This is a magnificent game. It is well worth your time and money. If you like solving realistic puzzles in a realistic [but not tacky] setting, Traitors Gate is simply a brilliant piece of gaming.

At times you'll find the pixilated/granulated scenery annoyingly difficult to make out, and the clunky interface difficult to get to grips with, but even so, what it does have is well thought-out and skilfully constructed.

It can get frustrating due to its lack of clarity and its relatively-long load-times between in-game sequences, particularly when you're forced to repeatedly re-try some of the more obscure puzzles, but, on the whole, it's logical and interesting, with its puzzles quite smoothly integrated in to the environment.

Although "Traitor's Gate" plays a little like an interactive slide-show with graphics quality falling dissappointingly short of such titles as "Amber: Journeys Beyond", and featuring clunky 'V.R.' type effects, the quality of which rest firmly on the far-side of those of "Riddle of the Sphinx", it does create very effectively an excellent sense of connected space/environment.

"Traitor's Gate" is dated, but the woefully limited resources of the day are, arguably, used to their fullest in the creation of a believably immersive environment, unlike most of the adventure titles published since its release...

...if you're a dyed-in-the-wool old-school adventure-gamer who enjoys the more dated "Dream-Catcher" or "Cryo" type adventure, I'd whole-heartedly recommend it.
.