Review Gobliiins 4 Developer: Société Pollene Publisher: Snowberry Connection Genre: Adventure/Puzzle Release Date: April 2009 Platform: Review by Greg Collins June 25, 2009		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

Aye-aye-aye! Those goofy Gobliiins are indeed back! When Sierra Online bit the dust about a decade ago, fans of classic adventuring had cause to despair. Gone were the Kings Quest games, the Space Quest games, the Larry games. No one who no longer believes in Santy Claus expects now ever to see Kings Quest IX, or Space Quest 7, or Leisure Suit Larry 8 (I mean one made with Al Lowe's participation). And yet, here we have Gobliiins 4. If you recall Gobliiins 1, 2 and 3 at all, you may not remember them as Sierra games. True enough. They were created in the early 90's by a French company called Coktel Vision, and distributed in the States by Sierra. The quasi fourth game of the series, Woodruff and the Schnibble of Azimuth, also came via Sierra, ca. 1995. Woodruff is not an official Gobliiins game, but did stem from the same mind and hand, writer and graphic artist Pierre Gilhodes. Well, M. Gilhodes must be a very persistent fellow. He's kept his rather unique vision all these years and talked another French company, Société Pollene, into joining forces with a Russian one, SnowBerry Connection, to market his official fourth Gobliiins game.

You may also not recall Gobliiins being an adventure game, per se. Certainly Gobliiins 1-3 are not traditional adventure games. They're more of an adventure-puzzle hybrid. You do have protagonists going on a quest, solving puzzles. There's an inventory. There are dialogues, of a sort. But the emphasis is on the puzzle-solving skills of the variously gifted Gobliiins. Each Goblin has his specialty and most of the puzzles consist of you figuring out which Goblin does what in which order. The three Goblins this time are named Tchoup, Perluis and Stucco. Tchoup does all the talking, keeps the inventory and does most of the thinking. Perluis provides what magic he can muster up, mostly moving things and animating odd creatures. Stucco is the muscle. The plot of Gobliiins 4 has Tchoup getting a message at his detective agency that the king's beloved pet aardvark has gone missing. It's up to our three heroes to, first, wend their way to the castle, then track down Riri, the missing aardvark. Or maybe that's aaardvark?

The days of DOS are long gone and Gobliiins 4 is a good-looking modern game, with the art once again courtesy of M. Gilhodes. It's a very distinctive, very French cartoon style, along the lines of Asterix. The Goblins universe also has its own laws and citizens, along the lines of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Vaguely medieval with a lot of talking animals and nonstop Three Stooges-ish slapstick. I'm not a techie so I have no idea anymore what kind of game engine is being used. This one appears to be some sort of 3D thingamajig. Only there's no camera movement. At all. Each of the game's fifteen levels is one giant playroom, with a surprisingly large depth of field, and the characters run around within it. It’s like playing in 15 different dollhouses. To me, they look like the sets of a Sixties puppet television series. Supercar, anyone? Fireball XL-5? Only no strings attached. Best of all, you can send all three goblins off on three separate tasks simultaneously. Sometimes, the puzzle requires you to do this, but the rest of the time it's as amusing as it is time-saving.

The plot is charming, but not terribly germane. The puzzles are the main deal here. While most objectives in the game are quite easy to accomplish, figuring out all of them is less so. Something is bound to trip you up. There's a certain amount of pixel-hunting, but at least everything onscreen is clearly labeled. Once you find it, that is. There's also a side quest to recover all of the large gold teeth that seem to be lying around. Again, acquiring most of these is simply a matter of remembering to pick them up before you move on to the next screen. But three or four of them will give you something to chew over. The teeth later in the game turn into your ticket to the game's secret bonus level. This is well worth pursuing, as the bonus level is one of the best in the game. There's no manual that I could see, but the game's main menu screen cleverly doubles as a tutorial.

It took me about four days to make my way through the game world of Gobliiins 4, extra 16th level included. I had a lot of fun doing it. And I was fairly proud of myself too, until I discovered, while perusing the offical site, www.gobliiins4.com, that the game was designed to be played by three-year-olds. I kid you not. Up till then I'd thought the age-guide label on the CD was a misprint. Must be 13+, no? Well, no. On one of the official site's web pages it goes on to say, "An average 8-year-old will take one to two hours to get through each level." But, uh, that's about how long it took me to get through each level.

I should have known. You can always tell when a game is designed for really young children. The more grinning, animated insects you see flitting about the screen, the more you know it's for les enfants. But, you know, it didn't really play like a children's game. Most of the puzzles were consistent with the ones in the earlier Gobliiins games. Not rocket science, but not child's play, either. I don't seriously see a 3-year-old managing this game by him- or herself. For one thing, they're never going to be able to cope with the level code you get after completing each scene. This is a ten-letter gobbledygook word that reads a lot like the word "gobbledygook." You have to be very careful not to confuse your vowels if you don't want to get an “incorrect code” response. The game also remembers your last level played and takes you there when you click “continue game.” But I was too paranoid to rely on that. I had visions of getting to level 14 and then finding out the game had forgotten my progress. It’s times like those that an ancient DOS device like a level code feels comforting, no matter how much of a pain it is to scribble down – legibly.

I'm not a professional child psychologist, but my feeling is that this game would probably be a lot of fun for a very young child to play alongside an older sibling, or a parent. Though I suppose an 8-year-old could get through it without help. The smart aleck. No doubt this says something rather profound about the human mind and aging. Does the average 8-year-old really have the same puzzle-solving skill as the average 28- or 38-year-old? Maybe. But if so, what is the advantage of getting older? Well, you get to tell smart-alecky 8-year-olds to go to their rooms. As for an adult playing Gobliiins 4 with a younger child, I would be careful about this. It could be a positive bonding experience for you both. Or, you might get frustrated over a puzzle and the kid might inadvertently overhear some inappropriate language. "Mommy! Daddy said a bad word!" Perhaps it would be best to let the 3-year-old play the game with the 8-year-old. You can play the game later at night when they're asleep. The game, conveniently, does keep track of a whole bunch of people's progress. You punch in a user name at the beginning, then select it when you return and type in your last level code. At first I was a little annoyed that I would lose whatever progress I'd made in the last level played, but it really only takes a minute to get back to where you were once you know the solutions.

There is voice acting in Gobliiins 4, but since it consists entirely of nonsense words like, "Gmooch brrrrip aaaaa wookie!" there's not much point in critiquing it. Actually, for an internationally marketed game like this one, it's a rather clever policy. You don't have to pay a whole lot of actors to dub the voice track into a half dozen different languages. You just change the onscreen translated text, the way they did with silent movies a century ago. There's some pleasant incidental music in the game, and it thankfully is rather unobtrusive. The sound effects are suitably wacky. The options screen provides most of the genuinely useful options, such as windowed or full-screen.

Gobliiins 4 is a polished production all around, very similar to the quality of the original games, only updated technologically for Vista and beyond. The version I played came on a single CD. When was the last time you saw a mainstream adventure game on a single CD? 1993 maybe? I get the feeling though, from the website, that Gobliiins 4 is primarily intended for digital download. I did think the game was a bit on the short side, but that may simply be that I was sorry when it was over.

Pierre Gilhodes's masterpiece still remains the rather unappreciated Woodruff. That is a truly wonderful game, with the kind of elaborate puzzles that no game distributor would ever dare let out the door nowadays. The where's-the-walkthrough crowd would be up in arms. As it is, I was somewhat shocked, along with pleasantly surprised, that Gobliiins 4 does not have a help system of any kind. Actually, there is one teensy bit of help in the bonus level, but it's mostly a joke, or a taunt, from M. Gilhodes. On the other hand, perhaps they figured Gobliiins 4 wouldn't need a hint system since it was designed for 3- to 8-year-olds. It's only the kids' parents who whine and kick and scream to the game distrubutor that there's no way to cheat. Your average 3- to 8-year-old knows that the whole point of a game is to challenge one's mental skills.

I can't really think of any negative aspects to Gobliiins 4. Controlling the three Goblins can be a pain at times. They have a tendency to bunch up everywhere, especially when you need to be able to switch among them quickly. But once you learn to hit the space bar to cycle through them, that's no longer a problem. Also, the load time for each level is rather lengthy. But since there’s zero backtracking, this too is not a serious drawback. Really, this is a cleverly designed and entertaining game. And no hint system! Encroyable. I would say that if you're an adult, it's an A minus (a tad too cutesy in spots). If you're an average or even above average 8-year-old, I'd say it's a straight A.

System Requirements:

• Windows XP/Vista
• Pentium 4 1.8 GHz
• 1 GB RAM
• 128 MB Graphics Card (GeForce FX 5700 or better)
• 1.5 GB free HDD space