Haven: Call of the King

The story is focuses on a young slave called Haven who sets out to try and free his people from bondage along with his mechanical friend Talon. The leader of his people has disappeared on a crusade across the galaxy and the wicked Lord Vetch has poisoned the population and forced them into slavery in his absence. Haven has a dream about a magical bell that can call Athellion back from his crusade, so he sets off around the globe to try and find this magical device.

The game begins with a couple of long cut scenes telling a little of the story and then dives straight into the action immediately leaving you still a little confused. The story isn’t too well explained at first so as you set off you have no idea what you are looking for or how you are going to achieve it.

Haven carries a small Yo-yo as a weapon and must search the towns and villages to find items such as cogs, feathers and stones in order to move around the globe. Along the way you will find no end of strange coloured orbs, but no indication is given as to what these coloured blobs actually do. The Yo-yo weapon works well for a couple of levels as there are very few enemies to deal with and later on you can collect power-ups to improve your weaponry for a short time.

Each area has a few easy objectives and these can be explained further if you can locate a green pot that doesn’t explode. It sounds strange, but then there are loads of gorgeous looking vases around and these can be destroyed most of the time with a quick swipe of your Yo-yo. Some contain extra health or swirling orbs, but then some contain explosives and will quickly quell your desire to smash everything.

The weird world of Haven is quite well represented with cutesy characters and lush levels to explore. The game engine seems to work extremely well for most of the game although the camera can become a pain at times making it difficult to make those long jumps.
Essentially Haven is a 3D platformer, but does include lots of other nice touches to set it apart from games like Ratchet and Clank and Crash Bandicoot. Sometimes you will need to do some shooting in a first person mode and then other times you will get to jump into a buggy or a speedboat and race around a circuit. These elements are a breath of fresh air and keep you involved with the story as you search the globe for the magical bell. Although there are a lot of different elements to the gameplay, the game is very linear and you can only explore one area at a time. Once you have sailed across the sea, there is no way back for a while and you cannot play the racing sections again until you reach a point much further through the action.

The game itself is quite involving after a while with some excellent puzzles for you to solve and many strange people to talk to, but it does take quite a while to get into. A tutorial intro would have gone a long way to make the opening few levels more interesting as they seem to drag a little and can become laborious after a time.

Once you have survived these dull platform areas though and moved to a special challenge, the game instantly becomes a lot more involving and great fun. Haven: Call to the King is not your average game and needs a lot of gameplay before you really understand what is going on and how to achieve your goals. The extra sections are brilliant and a welcome break from what looks like another tedious platform adventure.
If you have plenty of time on your hands and like something a little bit different, then you really should call to the King!