Mortality Bytes is consistently funny and entertaining, essential for fans of the point-and-click genre.
As with most point and click adventure games, Mortality Bytes places you with a persona of a main character to venture throughout the game to find obscure items, solve puzzles and solutions and to converse with other quirky characters. Those familliar with the novels will recognise Rincewind, a dire wizard in training who has a mission bestowed upon him to seek out three sticks, a dripping candle, odor and mouse blood so that a spell allowing spirits to be released from dead bodies can be cast.
After the introductary task, the plot thickens to Rincewind having to fake his own death, leading him to a very high strung Death (who conforms to a strong sense of irony here). Other memorable characters include a protesting Suffragette, a midget Cassanova (with an unforgettable song!) mallet wielding monkeys and even the screen siren Marilyn Monroe makes an appearance. Keeping these icons in balance is the brilliantly characterised Rincewind. His Victor Meldrew attitude and dry commentary matched with his obvious flaws make him one of the funniest protagonists ever. Being someone who found an amicable link in Pratchett's books and the classic Monty Python, I was more than surprised by the amusing vocal performance of Monty Python's Eric Idle as our hero Rincewind. (Interestingly, the Victor Meldrew-esque hero is played by the man who wrote the theme tune to that show.)
Although Rincewind is the straight man to the unusual characters, some of the dialogue can be meaningless; when it's not so longwinded there are some witty one liners worthy of grins. It's Pratchett's harmless sattirical humour of stereotypes and social attitudes; transferred into a video game somehow delivers solid chemistry on screen as it does in his books.
Ankh-Morpork and the rest of the 'disc' is not such a unique place to be in the genre of adventuring. Item solutions need closure and puzzles require solving. But the nice thing about this game is that the difficulty of completing the game is divided. Fans of the novels will expect the nature of the game and predict the answer to the smart inventory puzzles. And for those who are in desperate thirst of a confident adventure game will find Mortality Bytes a challenging feat of free-form concentration, with the clues saving the game from being more bothersome than enjoyable. Vast exploration of the Ankh-Morpork and encountering strange characters that boast at least one hundred hours of gameplay (which, I must admit, is far less than I spent completing it) separate this game from a dozen others.
Visually, Mortality Bytes is just as charming as the script and characters. The 2D graphics are boisterous in colour, tweaking the mood to a more murky nature when it needs to. While the visual presentation of Mortality Bytes is nothing revolutionary, it easily fits the quota that the nature of the game has with the quirky characters and a bizarre world; an effective portrayal through vibrant colours and comic-book animation.
Mind you, the sound and musical score is also impeccable. Without Eric Idle, though, pretty much of everything about the game would have been missunderstood. As said, Rincewind is a clash between Victor Meldrew and Idle himself from the Monty Python films and his narration sets the game alight with enthusiasm. Other vibrant performances come from Cassanova and Death, making sure that when you finally finish the "one hundred hours of gameplay", you will never forget them. On the musical side there is a closing number by Eric Idle and a nice little boogie from Rincewind to accompany it. Every other tune is either mellow, sinister or narcotically bizarre - whatever the mood, the musical flair is of excellent substance. Discworld Mortality Bytes' true value is the fact that it remains loyal to Terry Pratchett's novels by adapting the perfect ingredients from his books, mainly the theme and good cast of characters, into the tentative world of adventure video gaming. It'll be hard for this game to dent the flagging trend in adventure tradition but, for the majority, becomes a nice reminder of why Discworld, and Pratchett himself, rocks. From start to finish the whole world of Mortality Bytes is supreme to the generic fodder seen in this genre. Do not miss out on this amusing gem.