Adam's Venture: Origins is just... OK

• written by Krist Duro
Adam's Venture: Origins is just... OK

To be honest, I knew nothing about this game. That was until I saw a video of Outside Xbox "making fun" of this game so I decided to give it a try. Now from the looks of it you get this idea that it is some sort of a poor man's Uncharted and well, you are completely right.

You get to play as the titular hero or better say douchebag, Adam Venture who embarks on this great adventure to find the secret Garden of Eden, yeah, that old chestnut. So the game has that going for itself, going all biblical and such, but that kinda presents a big problem or a big gripe, better say, I have with the game. Everything is just in your face. The entrance of the fabled Garden of Eden? Sure, it's just at the end of this cave. The entrance to a secret templar temple? Sure, it's just behind this well-lit door...I mean came on.

I wanted to believe this stuff, I wanted to be immersed into this mystery, but I just couldn't. The puzzles didn't help either. Now granted, the game has some neat old-school puzzles to solve which nowadays come as a treat, but even there the game kinda disappoints. There are a few easy to understand and execute puzzles such as connect the wires or ring a few bells in sequence to progress, but then you have many other ones that literally do not make any sort of sense. For example later in the game there are a few locked doors which you open by solving some puzzles with roman numerals but are not given any context or clues whatsoever on how to solve them or some other ones with circles and light that do not make any sense whatsoever... you'll just be glad for walkthroughs. I mean, who built these puzzles especially in the locations you visit in the game, it's the same situation with the first Tomb Raider game where in century old chests you would find modern weapons part... it doesn't make any sense!

Speaking of locations and environments, that's one of the good things the game has got going for itself. The story takes place in 1925 and will see you travel to some "exotic" locations. Visually speaking the game looks nice. While it will not blow you away with an insane level of details or photorealistic visuals, at times it has its special moments, the desert areas look cool or hot (see what I did there) and some of the caves have a few cool lighting effects. Body animations such as walking, running and crouching look OK at best while the grappling one looks wooden AF. Facial animations are, let's say it, utter rubbish. The mouths barely move and the dialogue surely does not help. It's bad, so bad actually that's good in a weird twisted way. Adam is just a plain douchebag with all sorts of silly and cringe worthy dad jokes. The same can be said for the rest of the cast, the assistant, the "evil" professor, so so bad... it's actually really funny.

Now I don't know if that was all deliberate or not, however to me it kinda redeemed the whole 5 hour experience. Being totally honest, I was provided a code by the guys over at Soedesco, so I didn't really put in the 40$ entry fee. Would I have bought it? Nope, I don't think it's worth the full price, but at a heavily discounted one, sure it may be worth it or at least it will entertain you with its (un)deliberate silliness.

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