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Website: www.pathway-game.com Price: $15.99
From the Web: “Adventure into the strange unknown with Pathway, a strategy RPG set in the 1930’s great desert wilderness. Outwit your enemies in daring turn based combat, raidoccult tombs, and make tough choices in a procedurally generated grand pulp expedition!”
Initial issues with pathway prevented me from reviewing this game sooner, it would not run on Intel graphics. With version 1 .08, this seems to be sorted. If you have an older machine and launch the game, you may think it is stuck at the first screen, but look at the bottom left and you will see a spinning skull. This will be the only indication that something is happening. See screenshot – just be patient and your game will load. The specs do say it needs at least 51 2MB of graphics memory, so keep that in mind.
The game ships with the original sound track with some really amazing Indiana Jones-esq music. The music titles include such gems as: 02 Somewhere in the Desert, 03 The Wrath of God, and 15 The Undead Are Coming. Gavin Harrison is truly talented. I actually have the OST playing at the moment, It is one of my favourites. If you purchase the game, really think about getting the OST too. I don’t always download the OST’s due to limited bandwidth, but I am glad I did. Some of those melodies will have you missing people you have never met. (You can even buy the Digital album on bandcamp and gift it to a friend).
GRAPHICS
The graphics in the game are its second biggest asset. I understand they were going for the 16-bit look and they achieved it. At 1 080p, the game feels a little too blocky for all the amount of detail once ingame. If you play the game at 720p though, everything looks amazing. I feel sorry for those with High DPI screens… Loading screens, etc, look out of this world. One can see that a lot of effort went into this game by the game artists. Everything in this game feels like Indiana Jones, even the world maps are similar. (Not the game map). Speaking of game map, the tiny Jeep and people getting out of it, animation really puts this game on a different level.
(Bottom right corner you will see the spinning skull)
GAME-PLAY.
Even though the game-play is great, it does feel a tad repetitive after a while. If I had to be pedantic I would say the game needed a bit more content for the replay-ability. This is usually the issue with story driven games, it needs lots of content and side quests to make you want to play it again once finished. I love that there are critical failures present, and one can blow yourself up with a clumsy hand grenade toss. The testers seemed to have done their jobs well and I did not get stuck anywhere on the map. If this genre is your type of game, you will really enjoy it; if it is not, you may find yourself drawn into this title.
SOUND AND MUSIC
I have already told you about the amazing soundtrack that screams Indie! (That’s Doctor Jones to you lady!). The other sounds in the game are apt and you always feel immersed with fitting music.
STORY
Instead of giving away anything about the plot, I will tell you about the colourful characters in the game. The characters all have positive and negative traits. Baron von B, the German gentleman imposter is your sniper, Miguel Ignacio Caballero, the Spanish civil war poet, is your grenadier, and Brumhilda, Queen of the Valkyries, Icelandic fairground wrestler, is your melee specialist. There are of course, many other colourful characters to choose from. It is good to see humour brought in here.
CONCLUSION
Pathway is an overall fun game with a reasonable story line, nice colourful graphics, and good sound. The only thing I would have liked to see was that the graphics still looked 16-bit at 1 080p rather than 8-bit. I would also have liked to see more missions and a little variety in the game-play. As it stands now, it is a good game, but it needs more to be a great game. It does have the potential to be a five-star game; let’s see if the developers can take it there with updates.