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Plus, some of the puzzles are actually kind of funny. The shipwrecked boat on the island, the beautiful underground mushroom cave, the city of the moles, and the Nihonian spaceship are all way more interesting locales than the boring city that encompassed the first part of Chaos Happens. Yet for how bad most of it this, it’s still a vague improvement. Then there’s Captain Narrow, a play off of Captain Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. There’s a crazy doctor who talks to the sock puppet on his hand as if it were alive, a joke South Park did nearly fifteen years prior. There’s a pretentious talking mechanical bird who follows you around. The new characters aren’t that much better. Swampy returns too, and his voice actor should be shot, or at least tortured a little. The Genie from Simon the Sorcerer II (who probably no one would recognize if Simon didn’t bring it up himself) also makes a return, here having taken on the guise of a Freud-like psychoanalyst. The cowardly Wolf returns too, and you can even play as him for a bit. The bratty Little Red Riding Hood was cute for just a second before, but she’s practically unbearable now that she’s devolved into an obnoxious straw feminist. Some old characters return, but they’re mostly the ones Silver Style made for the last game. The same horrendous voice actors from Chaos Happens return to fill their voice roles, and the dialogue is just as dire as ever.
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Other than the graphics, though, not much else has improved. It’s a suitable style that makes it more distinct. The advertising claims this is “cel-shading”, but it really isn’t – they’re just regular textures colored to make them look more like classic cartoons. It looks mostly the same, although the character models are much brighter and cartoonier. Simon the Sorcerer: Who’d Even Want Contact? uses the same interface as its predecessor. But paradise can’t keep him down long, as Simon eventually heads to the skies to take down the otherworldly visitors. Before Simon can properly take off after her, he’s accosted by two talking moles in trenchcoats and whisked away to a tropical island prison, purportedly for his safety. And its sequel, Simon the Sorcerer II, as well! By the way, did you know that a reference to this computer game was used by a Czech translator in his translation of one of the books by Terry Pratchett? Obviously, I was not the only one in this country who loved Simon.In the fifth Simon game, the Magic World has been invaded by a group of aliens called Nihonians, not only stirring up trouble but also kidnapping Alix. If you do not insist on 3D action and film-like rendering of the characters in the games you play, I can only recommend Simon the Sorcerer. Various half-hidden hints will make you ask other characters more questions than you actually need to get to the end (you will end up asking each character ALL of the possible questions, as far as I can judge from my own experience), and it is worth the time. You will find yourselves walking around talking to other characters just for the sake of talking. Now, 13 years later, I can appreciate other aspects than the graphical design. Even though I was not able to play this game without the help of the directions in a computer magazine (remember - English is not my mother tongue), I loved to walk around exploring various locations - the village, the forest, even the swamp. It was colourful, hand-drawn, the wizard moved in a funny way and it had this fairy-tale atmosphere. In those times I did not understand English very well (actually, I did not know more than a few words and a couple of phrases.), so I did not know what was going on there. In 1993, when I was a little girl, my father brought this game home.