Just got my Infernal Machine today...

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Posted by Goodsport from adsl-216-102-199-185.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net on November 15, 1999 at 23:07:39:

... I installed it, cranked the options all the way up (3D Sound, Triple Buffer, Microsoft Sidewinder Joystick, etc.), and let 'er rip! It looks and sounds good, although it seems that they may have gotten a different voice-actress to play Sophia Hapgood, although I could be wrong on this (they definitely got Doug Lee to reprise his Indy from Fate of Atlantis, though)! :)

I only had time to play the first level and a little bit of the second (and probably won't have a lot of time to play the game until later in the week), but it's fun. And a pretty chilling story backdrop (the beginning of the Cold War)... I obviously wasn't alive during that time, but I studied enough about it in school to know what scary time that was (the beginnings of the Arms Race, the later incident of Gary David Powers and the U-2 Spy Plane Scandal, etc.). The games intro and the beginning levels handle that period well.

LucasArts also did its homework with the Soviets. It would have very easy to do what most video game companies (as well as movie-makers, TV producers, etc.) did way back when, when dealing with fighting the Soviets (pretty popular genre in the 1980's)... just write some Cyrillic-like squiggles on the Soviets' vehicles and such and pass that off as Russian writing, as well as having the Soviet soldiers speaking in unintelligible mumbling, passing that off as them speaking Russian. After all, most Americans couldn't tell the difference, right?

Instead, though, when I played the beginning of the second level (at the Soviet base), I noticed that the crate had true Russian writing on it, and it actually said something (I believe the top of the box said "Leningrad Physics Institute - Property of Volodnikov"... written in Russian, of course). And in the demo, the soldiers shooting at Indy really did yell in Russian, with hardly a hint of an American accent (good voice actors, I suppose). Of course, when Volodnikov had an important conversation with his radioman in Level Two, they both spoke in accented-English... quite understandable for the playing audience. Again, I'm sure that none of this makes any difference to the majority of players who probably don't understand Russian, but believe me - this extra effort for realism by LucasArts is much appreciated by those of us who do (don't worry, I'm an American born and raised... I had studied Russian, though, which explains how I speak and understand it). :D

So far, the game seems great. I can't wait for when I'll have a lot of time to play it! 1 1/2 years of waiting (since the game was first announced in May, 1998) is over, and thanks to LucasArts' tradition of quality, it is definitely worth it! :)


-G





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