Previous Next

Be warned, folks. Gothik is a game designed to take up hours and hours of your daily schedule. Its a game of strategy, mapping, zapping, scrapping and handicapping.

The plot sounds vaguely familiar: Once upon a time... far distant land ... good wizard living among the people everything hunky-dory bad wizard turns up with his army generally obnoxious... defeats the good wizard... cuts him up into six chunks... ginormous castle... secret chambers...

The object is to explore the four castle towers level by level, and in the process collect up the six parts of the good wizard. Stick him back together and you have won the game.

Ah, I forgot to tell you about all the evil little creatures that wander around trying to kill you. These natives are not friendly, fortunately for you neither are they immortal. The good news is that you have a few weapons about your person to aid their despatch to that great baddy-bin in the sky. The bad news is that you don't have a limitless supply.

You have three types of weapon to choose from - arrows, lightning bolts and fireballs - which can be swapped around from a status report screen.

Around the corridors, which are viewed from above, you come across sundry objects and magic potion bottles. The objects replenish your armoury and the potions can help or hinder you with some hooray magic spell.

To further hinder your progress brambles grow all around, blocking the corridors, and you have to clear them away.

You can teleport from one tower to another on the same level by entering a portal. One tower usually has an extra portal taking you to one of the secret chambers holding a bit of the good wiz.

Once you enter the portal you are whisked off to a constricted little maze where you have to outrun the forces of darkness creeping up behind you.

Once you reach the end you have to blow up a giant green dragon which guards the sixth-of-the-wiz, then it's on to the next level.

The two types of marauding baddies on the first level look like gorillas and little blue Smarties. Once you've zapped 'em they end up looking like swirling red cowpats. On the second level the baddies look like blue hedgehogs, and they're pretty hard to see because the playing area turns a speckly blue as well.

The graphics are good and the characters are really cute, even more so when they drink a potion which gives them double speed. Their little legs start going up and down like bats' wings.

It's a shame there is no save game facility with Gothik, because you can literally be playing it for hours.

Minor niggles aside, this is an absorbing game with a great deal of humour and a lot of depth to it.

A game where the scenario doesn't make much sense. If the good wizard didn't manage to defeat the bad one before he got hacked to pieces, then how on Earth is he going to manage it once you have resurrected him?

Having said that, this is my sort of game. No zapping of aliens, plenty of puzzles to sort out and no time limit. The graphics of good and everything moves along at the pace you dictate.

There is plenty to see and do. The meanies aren't too difficult to avoid, although they do gang up on you at times. Choice of weapon can be very important, and ammunition tends to run out very quickly if you are trigger-happy.

The separate status report screen, from where you choose weapons and eyeball scores and levels of life, is a nice idea, freeing the whole screen for the game itself.

A smooth game; easy to play, but difficult (I would imagine) to complete.

Yawn. About the most exciting thing that happened to me in Gothik was when I gargled with some bionic mouthwash and ended up rushing around like a wind in a bean can (I bet the Ed cleans that one up).

In one form or another, this plot has been done before, and no doubt it'll be done again. I guess that means it's popular. Not with me it isn't.

Yawn.