Mata Hari, is a 2009 Adventure game, made by Cranberry Productions. The duo behind this game is Hal Barwood and Noah Falstein, the creators of "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis". This is a reason to beleive, that we are dealing with a great adventure game. Is it like that? Let's find out....
1) STORY.
The player takes the role of Mata Hari, the famous dancer and spy, during the times of the 1st world war. As we know Mata Hari was sentenced to death, after she was found guilty for being a double spy. In the game Mata hari begins her career and through her contacts she finds the path for a successful dancing career but also for a career as a spy. The player must guide Mata, apart from her dancing career, during her missions as a spy, which must have a successfull ending. Will her efforts have possitive results? Will she survive this difficult and complicated but also dangerous trip through the years of the first world war? The answer will be given only at the end of the game,which varies according to what happened during the game. A quite innovative story and a subject which was never seen before in an adventure game.
Grade: 9/10
2) GRAPHICS
Mata Hari has in the main manu the option to choose the resolution and other variables of the graphic properties. This makes the game playable for many kind of Monitors and graphic cards. Everything in the game is very detailed designed. The locations, the sprites, the visual effects. Many colors are used. The graphics achive to give to the player the "atmosphaire" of the first world war, as everything is designed for this purpose. The cars, the costumes, the buildings, even the way the sprites interact to each other remind of the first 20th century years. The movement of the sprites is great but not perfect. In general, we have a game with great graphics.
Grade: 9/10
3) SOUND
Beautiful musical themes guide Mata through her Journey as a spy. The main theme is fantastic. In every country that Mata visits are different themes to hear. All of them are of high quality and not boring. The voice acting is very good and the sound effects too. The sound plays a major supporting role in this game.
Grade: 10/10
4) GAMEPLAY:
Mata Hari is a game of medium length and medium difficulty. It is a third person point'n'click Adventure, mouse driven.The game has many possible endings, which depend on what has happened during the game. it is also positive that the game has endless save slots. The riddles are mostly inventory based, but there are also more complicated like puzzles, things which should be put in the correct order, things that must be found etc.Hitting a button on the Screen all the hotspots are shown, if a possibility exists for the player to miss something.There is only an occation where the game lacks reality. This is it when Mata has to travel from one country to an other. This can happen, for the needs of the game, very often. There are almost no action scenes. As action scenes could only be defined 1) In a case wher the player should guide Mata from a speciffic beginning to a specifing end of a place in a specific order, so that she won't be traced by the guards. 2) When Mata must perform a dance. In these cases, in order to have a successfull performance, the player must hit notes which are coming from the left and right side of the dancing Mata Hari and collect as many points as possible, since the notes are many and move fast enough. If the players achieves a good Points result, then the performance of Mata is successful. If the opposite happens, then Mata should try again. This is the only somehow annoying process in the game. In order to be inspired for a dance performance, Mata looks at the birds while flying, looks at water coming out of a spring, sees the sky. This is also a job, that the player has to do. Everything else is very simple.
Grade:8/10
5) GENERAL:
This is a nice Adventure game with great techincal aspects and an interesting story. It might not be that difficult and might not have the length that other games have, but this is not enough to prevent the player from enjoying ιτ.
Final Grade: 8/10