Amerzone: The Explorer’s Legacy

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Back when I was just getting into gaming on PC, I remember hearing about comic artist Benoît Sokal jumping into the gaming world with Amerzone: The Explorer’s Legacy in 1999 on PC and the original PlayStation. I also remember how he continued teaming with game developer and publisher Microids with the famed Syberia titles that made him and the company legendary.

In honor of the original 1999 classic and Sokal who sadly passed away a few years ago, Microids has completely remade Amerzone: The Explorer’s Legacy with modern graphics that fans will love while giving a new generation of gamers a chance to see why this title is so beloved.

via YouTube

The plot is still the same from the original game, where you control a journalist in the late 1990’s that’s assigned to interview a French scientist named Alexandre Valembois who has quite the story to tell. During the 1930’s, Valembois went on a scientific expedition to the little known Amerzone region where he discovered all sorts of strange, unheard of plant life as well as some unique legless white birds.

Looking to have some sort of proof of these discoveries, he steals an egg from these birds to show off to the scientific community, but these birds and their eggs are highly sacred to the people in Amerzone. Sadly it doesn’t go as planned as the community mocks and scorns him as he leaves in shame. Now all these years later he asks for your help in making things right with the Amerzone people by returning the egg, which won’t be easy of course as you’ll have to solve plenty of puzzles and overcome obstacles to do so.

Those who are familiar with point and click titles such as the famous Myst series will feel right at home here, You point and click your way through various, static locations where you can move about and interact with points of interest in the location you’re in. This is where the challenge comes in, as you’ll have to figure out what to interact with, whether it’s an item, switch, or object, and put together how to use them to move on in the game.

Thankfully if you get stuck you can press a button to highlight all of the interactive points in a room. It’s still up to you to figure out how to solve puzzles and mysteries to proceed. As an extra treat for fans of the 1999 original, Microids changed some of the puzzles and how to solve them, as well as added in some new ones to test your skills. So you can forget about those old strategy guides and FAQs.

This remake looks and sounds great as the new graphics are a huge leap in quality from the classic game. Everything looks great and is richly detailed. The only gripe that comes to mind is the inconsistent framerate which is a real shame given how beautiful the game looks on my PlayStation 5. Even when I was running it on performance mode that prioritizes frames over graphics, it performs worse than on quality mode which focuses more on the graphics. Here’s hoping an optimization patch comes along soon.

Besides the framerate hiccups, Amerzone: The Explorer’s Legacy is one of the best point and click titles you’ll find out there. This remake is a nice tribute to Sokal and his works, as well as to the genre in general. If you’re a fan of these games, you’ll want to go ahead and pack your adventurer bags to explore the legacy that is Amerzone.