Third Dimension Review and Win 7 Installation

[darkgaizat]

Hey everyone,

I just got Atmosfear Third Dimension in the mail on Friday and I thought I'd give a little review, for anyone who hasn't seen/played it.

First off when I got it, the box was in REALLY bad shape, but everything inside of it was good. It comes with Harbinger reference cards that open up to show maps of the layout of the board and has a reference to what powers the keys actually give you (and they are important if you want to beat this game against the PC harbingers). It also comes with a data CD and an Audio CD. I was glad that the Audio CD was just ambient music, and not something where the Gatekeeper would interrupt. (Length is perfect for anyone who would want to create their own Nightmare Tape) As for the music itself, it's actually REALLY good, and doesn't seem to date itself at all. (Was funny I was watching some drama show with the music playing in my headphones and it seemed to match what was going on pretty good)

Now for the installation. Very basic installation if you have XP, but it WILL throw you through a loop when you see that when it asks which operating system you have, your choices are Win 3.1 or Win 95...wow...Most of my PC's are Win 7 now, and it won't install on windows 7, (It will install if you run as Admin, but it won't play at all) I kept getting a weird ntvdm.exe error that I did find the fix for, after much looking around on google. On Microsoft's website there is a Windows XP mode for Windows 7 you can download (and I tried this with 32 and 64 bit successfully) NOTE: This is not the same as compatiblity mode. You download this first then download the right Windows Virtual PC, and viola, you have a running version of XP inside of Win 7, and the game installs. (I was starting to think I'd never actually get to play it) I made an ISO of the data disc, which you need to play, and had the Virtual PC mount the ISO so there wouldn't be any lag in game play (which I noticed).

The game itself at first seemed a little, meh, but once I got the mechanics down, it actually has been growing on me. I read in one review of the game you couldn't see what other players were doing, but this is only during single player games against the computer. One interesting thing is you can limit the time of how long the turns can be. (I found myself testing it out at 10 seconds and thought it would just regulate how much time the clock reduces, but NO, it really is how many seconds you have to play...10 is too short...I can get by on about 20 comfortably) Depending on the difficulty, will determine the number of computer players, how many keys you can start out with (awesome), and how many duel points you and the pc opponents get. Since I'm on the topic of duel points, I found this to be REALLY weird and depending on the difficulty very annoying. There is no special mark on the board which allows dueling, but at the beginning of every turn you have an opportunity (if you so desire) and each person puts up a percentage of their points they have accrued to try and steal a key or put a curse on the other player (which actually is pretty cool when you see what they do) but the computer player may choose to do this very frequently. I've found what is best is to accrue as many points as possible and then bid 0 when they duel you. They usually bid a fair amount of points and then you just turn around and duel them back to take back your key. (then turn around and do it again to curse them...suckers) Like I said, kind of annoying because the computer doesn't really have a strategy when it comes to dueling. Human players would make it more fun.

Becoming the chosen one is the first to roll a 12 on 2 die, and if you become the chosen one, I feel sorry for you. It seems the game actually diverts it's attention more to the chosen one than other players (it seems, but I haven't played a 6 player game yet) and you'll be losing 1 die every so often, but I have seen it where the chosen one gets like 3 free turns in a row, so...

Not a HUGE diversity in dialogue from the gatekeeper, but I can get around that. Every so often you play these minigames (blackjack being my personal favorite) and they aren't bad. Depending on your position, going for broke isn't all that bad. One issue I had is that clicking on certain things seemed to not work sometimes in the minigames. It can be really frustrating as the Gatekeeper will choose one for you if you don't pick, say, one of 10 doors, but the game won't let you choose one for yourself...kind of annoying.

One thing I wish they had done was created a HUD for who's turn it was currently on. There is a splash page that shows up for who's turn it is, and it gets kind of annoying to see and hear the same thing every turn's beginning, but it's the only opportunity to pause/exit the game if so needed, or to duel.

Something I found out was if you set it to it's lowest possible difficulty, you start off with all 6 keys and no opponent. Though the Gatekeeper will constantly nag you and even preoccupy you by making you roll a 6 to play again, you're free to roam or (attempt to) beat the game at any time. The game has pre-determined fears to choose from, and once you finally make it to the well, it randomly chooses from ALL of the fears, (would be impossible to win a 1 player game otherwise) it's actually pretty cool as it shows you a video of certain fears coming to pass. If it is yours, you are taken out of the game completely and all the other players get a chance to win.

All in all, once you get the mechanics down (and the game actually installed) it's actually pretty fun. As much fun as playing the board game??? No, but when I get downtime at work, it beats solitaire for sure, and I NEVER miss an opportunity to hand the Gatekeeper his keys! I'll try to upload some screenshots soon.

[darkgaizat]

Here are some pics

[darkgaizat]

Here are a Few more

[darkgaizat]

A few more

[darkgaizat]

a few more

[darkgaizat]

Here are some pics of the package itself.

[DarkWolff]

Great review! As someone who has and has played the PC game many times in the past, I think everything you said is spot on. I remember playing a game with a lot of computers and getting frustrated when they either would all try to duel me every turn or would never duel! Part of the game is making sure you farm duel points.

One thing I liked was the look of all the provinces. The terrain is really nice! There could have been more things going on, and a larger sense of scale would have been nice, but otherwise it was really good.

Overall a fun game that could use some UI improvements.

[darkgaizat]

Yes, I agree with you. I thought the player card/map/key references were pretty genius. Can't imagine the game without the key references, you'd have no idea that it helped at all. I hope the Windows 7 installation will help someone in the future.

[Faust]

Nice! After not playing any of my games for a while I got antsy enough and played the PC game for a while a week or so ago. I still enjoy it, even though the game isn't perfect. Good for nostalgia also!