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REVIEW: LES PASSENGERS DU VENT by Richard Karsmakers

"The sailor and the albatros have never been good friends..."

With these lines starts the story accompanying the new Infogrames
game "Les Passengers du Vent",  a graphics 'adventure' based upon
the  story  by François Bourgeon.  The Dutch  version  is  called
"Kinderen van de Wind"; the German version is published under the
name "Reisende im Wind".

The  story:  Aboard  a sailing ship around the end  of  the  18th
century, we meet Hoël, Agnes de Roselande, Isabeau de Marnaye and
the ship's doctor, Saint-Quentin.
At  the  beginning of the comic book (a very well  drawn  one,  I
might add) that accompanies the game,  Noël finds out that  there
are  in fact two women on board of the ship - Agnes and  Isabeau.
These have grown up together and looked exactly alike.  Once, for
fun,  they swapped clothes when they were children. But it became
serious,  as  the  father took his supposed  daughter  (the  real
Isabeau) away and the real Agnes was put into a orphan's home. As
it would arise quite a scandal if anything would leak  out,  they
had not been in the position to put everything right again.
While the French ship was fighting some English ships,  the  real
Isabeau was killed and Hoël,  Agnes (that will from now be called
Isa,  as  she  is known to all people by this  name)  and  Saint-
Quentin  leave  the ship,  to be captured  by  the  English.  Isa
doesn't get captured and finds work with one Mr.  Hereford,  from
where  she will try to get Hoël out of jail.
This is where the adventure starts.

After  booting up,  the game presents itself to the  player  with
some  well drawn,  comic-like graphics and a well composed  piece
of  music.  The action in the game is taken by use of  the  mouse
only.  You  just click somewhere to display  a  character,  click
somehere  else  to  make the character  say  something  (no  real
interactivity, here), etc. It works a bit too difficult, I think,
but the plot behind the adventure is indeed very well thought out
and the graphics are well done as well.
All people already know that I am not much of an adventure freak,
and that's why I am not really stunned by an adventure like this.
But it's definately much better than all the Infocom stuff.  It's
not my cup of tea, but it isn't hard to imagine someone liking it
very much.
Game Rating:

Name:                              Les Passengers du Vent
Sound:                             7
Graphics:                          7.5
Hookability:                       8
Lastability:                       7
Overall rating:                    7.5
Remarks:                           Good plot. Good comic supplied
                                    with the game.
Price:                             99 Dutch Guilders

Thanks to Homesoft, Haarlem, for sendind me a review copy!

Disclaimer
The text of the articles is identical to the originals like they appeared in old ST NEWS issues. Please take into consideration that the author(s) was (were) a lot younger and less responsible back then. So bad jokes, bad English, youthful arrogance, insults, bravura, over-crediting and tastelessness should be taken with at least a grain of salt. Any contact and/or payment information, as well as deadlines/release dates of any kind should be regarded as outdated. Due to the fact that these pages are not actually contained in an Atari executable here, references to scroll texts, featured demo screens and hidden articles may also be irrelevant.