Product Description

A Deep Space Adventure by Sean Clark in collaboration with Steven Spielberg

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8647 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: LucasArts
• ESRB Rating: Kids to Adults
• Platform: DOS
• Format: CD

Customer Reviews

Classic maze/puzzle game
From the "old" days when VGA was "COOL" and the fastest thing on the street was a 386. This was a fun play with "cutting edge" animation clips at each level...

Not Up To The Lucas Arts Standard
The story for this game was developed by Steven Spielberg for a movie. He subsequently decided that a movie would cost too much, and he suggested to Lucas Arts that the story might form the basis for a video game. "The Dig" is the result.

It is discovered that an asteroid circling our planet is in an unstable orbit and that it will crash somewhere on earth and cause a catastrophe. A team is dispatched to detonate explosive charges on the asteroid in order to move it to a stable orbit. On the asteroid, the crew finds a tunnel that leads to a cavern containg a large mysterious object. When certain plates are assembled, the object morphs into a space ship which takes the crew to a planet. By accident, the crew discovers a lower level called a "Nexus." Here is where the main game begins.

I have two issues with the game. First, gameplay tends to drag. From the Nexus five spires (also called museums) are visited twice. Much time is spent going and coming. You visit a spire, walk around, perhaps collect an object, and return to the Nexus. There is no sense of forward movement. There are several "trial-and-error" puzzles, always tedious, which slow game progress even more.

Second, after playing the game for some time you will begin to wonder just what the plot is. Where is this game going? The game ends rather abruptly, actually unexpectedly, leaving you still wondering.

In sum, "The Dig" is worth playing but you are left with the sense that it should have been better.

Epic adventure
As a person who has not played a lot of other Lucasarts adventures, but plenty of others I found this game thoroughly enjoyable. The background art is fantastic, the muscial score is top notch, and the cut scenes are very well done. The only thing I felt could have used some more refinement was tha actual characters which seemed a but too pixelated even for 1995.

The puzzles are for the most part reasonable to figure out with out having to consult a walk through to figure them out. It is a fairly serious game, with a bit of humor thrown in every now and again. If you like to explore in your adventure game playing then buy this game, it is truly beautiful. It is a great story to follow, and has a lot of nice cinematic elements that keep you interested in the story.