Somewhat impressive beginning leaves nothing but disappointment along the way.

User Rating: 6 | The Immortals of Terra: A Perry Rhodan Adventure PC
Let me introduce, Perry Rhodan, one of the most successful and best selling German science fiction series ever. Created in 1961 by K. H. Scheer and Clark Darlton and then by ever changing team of authors, the series hit 2450 installments in August 2008. What they all have in common, like the name points, is Perry Rhodan himself. Immortal man, remembering centuries he endured.

While there have been a many kinds of his adventures, involving parallel universes, extremely remote parts of galaxies, rides in time, encountering new races, etc, much like Star Trek Episodes for example, this game will engage you in one of the most uninteresting stories, that could be in store for Perry Rhodan.

The game starts by an animation, roughly showing the world of Perry Rhodan, pointing on problem with over-globalization of the universe, the greed and promising a very interesting insight to the mind of a man that lived for centuries. The real problem with the game is that nothing of that is going to happen, at all.

After the intro sequence (that ends by a very well choreographed fighting sequence) the game throws you right into a story offering some solid questions for you to uncover. Unfortunately, that doesn't take so long and by the end of the first act (there are six), you probably will have the whole mystery all figured out. And if you won't, then all that you are going to find out is that you really had in the first place.

The game puzzles is probably even worst, than story. Not well scripted and designed. That the game doesn't offer many alternative ways to explore, that wouldn't be a problem, but because it's bad design forces you to go the right way, it does as much as not allowing you to do something, while it's just because you haven't collected all the objects, or haven't spoken to all characters. Once you do all, that designers of this game required you to do, voila, impossible is just possible again. Or things (that I really loved in this game) that you have something in your inventory, you are absolutely sure to use and spend a lot of time of figuring out, why the hell it doesn't work, while the advance in game requires somewhat completely else and much more unrealistic.

Also, you play through as Perry Rhodan, probably the best known and the most powerful human in universe; still, you solve really simple minded and not very ambitious quests. The story is presented through his talking to himself, which is again boring and just explaining. No emotions and no space for player experiencing much, at all. Also, every interaction feels like Perry Rhodan knows things, but never really left his bridge HQ on Earth.

The ending is simply shocking. Especially the last puzzle and never ending comment "It has a safety...." or "There is a safety...", that you are going to hear so many times, that it could make you shout back at the screen. After that, the point of the ending itself is just so not right and you didn't even need to save the galaxy.