The third installment of Westwood's popular Adventure series picks up where the first part ended: Brandon has defeated the evil court jester Malcolm and turned him into stone. Brandon became king and everything was well (well, apart from the fact, that the former king and queen are... dead). A lightning frees Malcolm from his prison, and now it's time to 'hear his side of the story', as the intro states.

You'll have to play the game to the end before you actually get to hear his version, though, because apart from the occasional unfounded claim not to have killed the king and queen, Malcolm doesn't really do much to clear his name. Instead, the player guides him on a wild goose chase all around the world (including metaphysical planes) which seem to be driven more by immediate needs ("I need to get off this island") than a final goal ("I need to prove I'm innocent"). On his journey, Malcolm is accompanied by his 'bad conscience' Gunther whose head pops up occasionally to give him 'bad' advice. As we learn, Malcolm's good conscience was knocked out and buried under a rock years ago.

Putting the change of perspective aside, players of the first two games can feel right at home in Malcolm's Revenge. The single-click controls and the handling of the (limited) inventory are still the same. The only small addition is the existence of a gauge used to set Malcolm's behaviour (from nice to lying).

What strikes the player as a positive development is the amount of interconnected things to do immediately in the first location (Kyrandia). There are a lot of puzzles, it all seems to be completely non-linear. Turns out this is, because there are various ways to solve this first episode, i.e. to get off Kyrandia. Very much appreciated, because it maintains the motivation to explore even more after having found one way.

Although the following episodes of the games are more linear and limited, this beginning leaves a really good impression. On the other hand, the quality of the puzzles themselves leaves a lot to be desired. Twisted, illogical and completely unmotivated actions which leave the player wondering how he should have come up with that particular idea are required in most of the cases. Those are padded with non-puzzles (e.g. opening countless locks with the same object) and tedious, repetetive and stupid activities (e.g. slashing away with a machete through amazingly fast-regrowing jungle plants - in a maze).

On the bright side, again, you can't really die. If you do, there's always the possibility to undo the last action. So experimenting (which is required due to the nature of the puzzles) is never fatally sanctioned. However, due to the inherent problems of the game engine, it all gets tedious once again: The limited inventory forces you to walk long distances just to retrieve a particular object you dropped somewhere all the time, the non-intelligent cursor forces you to click wildly all over the background pictures to search them, and often, you'll even need to enter certain locations again and again until the object you're looking for is randomly placed there at last (if the junkyard right at the start of the game annoyed you, let me assure you there's another one waiting for you later).

The audio-visual presentation is, as expected, very professionally done. All dialogue has been recorded with appropriate voices, and everything looks colourful. Personally, I don't care much for the rendering look which replaces the hand-drawn backgrounds of the predecessors, but that's certainly just me. At times, the makers seem to be a little too much in love with their rendered animations, though, as you're forced to watch quite a few of them time and time again with no option to skip them.

It's a pity that the game design is so shoddy. Playing the bad guy is a refreshing change, and it's good to see the game making fun of its own clichéd plot. I really want to like the game, but due to the nature of its gameplay (for the third time, but it can't be said often enough: tedious), it's close to impossible. Pity.


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