Wasted Dreams
| Developer: DDE | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: DDE | Sound: |
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| Year: 1999 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Action-adventure | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 2 simultaneous | Rating: |
8/10 | |
The 21st century as they promised us: overpopulation, pollution, poverty, crime. Earth has become uninhabitable, and in a show of responsibility, as we’ve come to expect from them, our governments decided to send 500 soldiers aboard a spaceship with the mission of finding a brand-new planet…
Nine months later, our bumbling explorers discovered a habitable (and probably uninhabited) planet, which they named Agillera. After a brief settling period, the colonists prepared a team to make the return journey and report back to our fellow Earthlings (the phone was too expensive). Unfortunately, the shuttle exploded shortly after takeoff. You’re the only survivor of the crash (a second one will miraculously rise from the wreckage in two-player mode). It’s up to you to figure out what happened and dole out some well-deserved slaps to the needy…
This is an adventure game with a mix of action (shoot the people who don’t help you), very polished, with a sleek and functional interface and a two-player mode! This is the first time I’ve seen this in an adventure game. The idea is brilliant – why wasn’t it used more often? Another notable element is the fully voiced English dubbing (clearly amateur), which creates a quirky B-movie atmosphere at times. I’m not sure if this was entirely intentional, but as a French speaker, I’m perfectly satisfied. What’s less forgivable, however, is the frequent risk of making the game impossible to finish if you don’t do things in the expected order (the infamous object-left-behind-that-becomes-inaccessible syndrome).
Wasted Dreams was probably influenced by Flashback (combat system) and Alien Breed (sound effects, two-player mode). In fact, the start of the game is reminiscent of Tower Assault.
On emulator, it requires a CD drive. Follow the procedure described at the bottom of the page of Final Odyssey.
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