The year is 2020, and the Earth's ozone layer has completely collapsed from years of neglect. Fortunately, scientists have found a way to repair the damage to our atmosphere using a mysterious element named "Rachellium." As luck would have it, this element can only be found on Titan (the largest of Saturn's moons). To make matters worse, Titan is not the lifeless moon photographed by numerous space probes, but a world teaming with intelligent life...hostile intelligent life. As Earth's most decorated astronaut, you must journey alone to this forbidding moon and obtain enough "Rachellium" to save the planet's atmosphere.
This cliche-ridden premise forms the storyline for Microforum's new action/adventure game, Huygen's Disclosure (pronounced HOY-gen). Sadly, the cliched plot is the best aspect of this tedious and uninspired game.
Since Huygen contains many encounters with hostile life-forms, special mention should be made of the combat system. Abandoning the simple "point, click, shoot" system commonly found in action/adventure games, Microforum has created an unnecessarily complex "aiming panel" to control your weapons. By moving a crosshair inside this one-inch square box, you aim your various weapons in the "real world." While it may sound simple, this system is far from intuitive.
In addition to wrestling with the aiming panel, you must also control the "aggression levels" of your NPC companions. This is achieved by issuing various orders via the keyboard. Attempting to act as both marksman (with the mouse) and commanding officer (via the keyboard), you quickly become so frustrated that you will lose any interest in ever completing the game.
To make matters worse, Huygen features some of the most ridiculous aliens to ever grace a video game. In fact, it appears that the artist merely took pieces of various animal meshes and grafted them together to make the aliens - often with laughable results. My personal favorite is an entity given the rather unglamorous name "Animal Type A." Believe it or not, Animal Type A is simply a giant eyeball grafted to the rear end of a Zebra! The fact that the interface makes killing this "alien" so difficult truly adds insult to injury.
In conclusion, Huygen attempts to combine the action of "Crusader: No Remorse" with a storyline inspired by LucasArts' "The Dig." Unfortunately, a frustrating interface and amateurish visuals make Huygen's Disclosure a chore to play - much less finish.
