Haven: Call of the King

"Variety, variety - mixed with great level-design"

In my magazine Haven got 84% and was called a sleeping hit. So I got it for 30 Euro and started. At first I was frustrated. This magball does not work very good and the controls seemed to be a little confusing (I did not find out some things since a tutorial is missing and since the manual is not that precise). And I did not find many of these damn keys! But this point of view changed...

Graphics (8/10)
I don´t know what they have against the graphics in Haven. The environments differ very much, the textures are beautiful in most areas, cut scenes are very nice so I think everything is well done.

Sound (7/10)
I like the music in most areas. But this burning village ''sound'' did almost make me turn off the music. All this crying around very soon gets on your nerves. But that´s just a single area. Sound was okay in most other areas. Voice acting is okay but they do have a little strange accent in the German version.

Controls (8/10)
In the beginning, you are a little confused when you have to use your magball or if you have to guide a shield dragon or if you have to load up a battery. There is no tutorial, the manual is a little unprecise but after a little time you get used to it. After some hours you will also be able to use your magball in a useful way.

Gameplay (9/10)
As I said in the headline: Variety, variety, variety! In the first mission you have to escape from a collapsing valley, then there is a jump and run passage, a dangerous lift ride, another jump and run passage, a boss fight, a shooting sequence. There are races, glider challenges, monkey ball passages, hovercraft scenes, spaceship passages in the game as well. So it will never really become boring.
Unfortunately the spaceship passages become a little boring by the end of the game. There are so many of them.
And the glider challenges are way too hard! Luckily you don´t have to complete the runestone challenge to complete the game.
Another good point is that there are no lives in this game. Come on, in difficult games like Super Mario Sunshine I really hate it to run around and collect extra lives all the time just because I am always falling into lava. Haven does not have lives, but there are many check points. If you die you automatically start again at the last checkpoint. Haven is quite a difficult game but you will seldom be frustrated because once you mastered a difficult passage and you loose your life you will be able to start behind this passage. I think this is fair.

Challenge
Haven is not easy. Some people get frustrated when they play the glider challenges (like me) or in the pirate galleon mission. This was hard but luckily I bet it the first time I tried (since I wrote a walkthrough I bet this passage three times altogether).
Once you find all rune stones you can start looking for the rune towers. This is very hard, it can take hours to find them. A little boring. Once you found all of them and once you mastered all challenges you have completed the game 100% and you will get a little different ending.

Overall (9/10)
I did not think Haven would be a great game but actually it is. I love all this variety in the game. I like the jump and run passages, the great level design. When I played this game I suddenly thought I had to write a walkthrough. So I did and I hope it helped many people.
And I really hope there will be a Haven 2.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/11/03, Updated 02/11/03