Next Life

Rating Teen Genre adventure Publisher Adventure Company External Links Official Adventure Company Website

Next Life is the latest installment in the revitalization of the point and click adventure. In Next Life, players take the role of Adam Raichl who finds himself waking on a desolate island filled with strange people confused about what the current year truly is. Players will have to navigate Adam through the island, and later through nightmarish dreams, in order to finally discover the answer to one of the world’s oldest questions: Ss there life after death?

Graphically speaking, Next Life is nothing special. It attempts to play as a 2D system using 3D models with nearly photo realistic textures. Unfortunately, most of the character models become cartoonish in the 2D format and the background creatures, mainly the birds, often look like they exist outside of the actual game. The environment, while nicely modeled, is still limited in scope and design and never really gives the player much to explore.

The only thing worse than the graphics is the voice acting. Delivered with no emotional connection to the characters and often misquoted, as indicated by the games subtitles, Godzilla movies are dubbed with more sophistication than Next Life. Thankfully the music and background sound effects do a better job of enhancing the overall feel of isolation and abstract realism that this title tries so hard to create.

Gameplay is controlled through the use of the mouse. Left clicking on a specific space will move Adam to the location indicated. Double clicking will make Adam run, which expends energy that can only be replenished by eating and drinking provided consumables. Left clicking on objects will allow the player to pick them up and place them in their inventories, located at the bottom of the screen. Clicking on items in the inventory screen allows players to pick up the item and use them, or combine them with other visible items or objects. Naturally using any item will also expend your available energy.

The right mouse button is used to examine objects more closely, or shift through a collection of different items in a group. Sadly, Next Life is very picky on exactly which pixel your cursor is hovering over and it can often become frustrating to figure out what you’re supposes to find at any given screen. The game gives you the option of making exits visible with the E key, but it really isn’t enough to help improve an already flawed system.

Once you have the mouse controls down, the rest is a random series of backtracking and item gathering that eventually leads to nowhere. In fact, there’s way too much backtracking than there should be. While it is acceptable to have to return to a previous location if you couldn’t perform the required tasks due to lack of information or items, it is unacceptable to have to keep returning for no other reason than to try an lengthen the overall play life. Any company experienced with this style of game-play knows that the key to a good adventure title is constant story progression. Retracing steps is much more suited for action titles like Metroid and The Legend of Zelda.

Point and click adventure games have been around since the dawn of PC gaming and are one of the easiest game types to design. Somehow, Next Life succeeds in doing the impossible. They’ve taken a point and click adventure and completely failed to deliver an enjoyable experience.