Haven: Call of the King

"This game deserves more recognition"

I feel genuinely bad for this little known action/adventure title. Its a real gem of game that has gone unnoticed in the world of over-hyped under-playable games market. But maybe that will change, because after several price-cuts and the new low $19.99 price tag, the appeal of the title is bigger than ever.

Story - Haven: Called of the King is a tale of a young hero named Haven who has dreams of being a great hero. Once Lord Vetch, who enslaved the entire population and works them hard, catches on to these dreams he sends men to hunt down Haven and have him killed. Haven is now on the run and embarks on a journey to discover the meaning of his dreams and help out his enslaved nation.
Okay so its not so original, and its not a great starting point to make this game look good and sell better but I have a duty to be objective. Thankfully though the storyline is not the selling point of this game, the best is still yet to come my friends, that was just an introduction to the game.

Gameplay - Now if you ever played Jak and Daxter (which is another awesome adventure game) then Haven will remind you a lot of that. The graphics, the feel, the controls are all very similar to Jak and Daxter. What is so good about this installment is the huge variety of things to do, one minute you running around the next you in space, flying, racing, putting out fires, in a huge arena, shooting down pirate ships, in a ball maze (think super monkey ball here), protecting these duck things. The list goes on and its all a seamless transition from one activity to the next which the developers of the game call FreeFormer(TM) technology. And another thing that impressed me was that there were no loading screens (apart from at the beginning) between one place and the next, from one activity to the other it was just fast action packed adventure that kept you on you toes, never knowing what you were going to do next, its great.
The down side, although it may seem all peachy up to now is that while all this variety is good some things aren't as good as others, in fact some things are just damned annoying. There is this part where you have to shoot down pirate ships from you own ship from mounted gun turrets and its just takes forever. At first you think its cool and a fresh idea but once its takes you several 20 minutes tries (and a aching arm) to complete its not so fresh anymore. So what I guess I mean is that while the variety is good some activities need to be thought out more and have more depth.
What is left to say is that the controls are easy to master and cause the minimum of problems and the camera is usually well-behaved. The use of pots as power-ups is nice except for the flaming ones that I keep running into by accident (not the developers fault but my own though I hate to admit it) and I like the fact that there are frequent auto-checkpoints so you don't have to go back to the beginning of each level when you die, which I did a lot.

Graphics - This is probably the biggest downfall seen by many people who played the game, it doesn't look as pretty as game like MGS etc. But to be honest it doesn't make that big a difference it still looks decent an anyway to make up for the no loading and huge worlds that were created the graphics had to suffer a little. Stop being so shallow! The graphics are good, with good texturing, enemies could be a little more intricate and detailed but other characters look good. As an added bonus there is no slow down either.

Sound - The sound effects for Haven are good. Though there is little script in the game it is all spoken so all you have to do is listen and its good quality too. The music while being okay and fitting the adventure style but it is rather limited. It would have been nice to see a few more tracks and some in your face, get you fired up tunes instead of basically background music.

Replay Value - Haven is a challenging little affair which won't be completed in a day (especially if you want to find all the secrets) and there are plenty of these secret key that unlock special pots and its a big world to explore too so there no shortage of fun to be had. Plus there some activities that just have to played again and again and you find yourself playing the game just for those activities, for me it was running the ball the maze in the lava caves, so much fun.

Final Words - I'm not saying this is a perfect game and I've certainly pointed out some of the flaws of the game in this review, maybe too many, but this is good game. Its fun, its challenging, there are many things to see and do (now it sound like an amusement park commercial), its just a pleasure to play, now more than ever at $19.99. So the verdict is its good enough to rent and cheap enough to buy.

Score -
Gameplay - lots of variety. 8
Graphics - could be better. 7
Sound - music could be better other fx good. 7
Replay - lots to discover, many things to do 8

Summary - An underrated game that is fun, original, but doesn't quite have the polish to make it truly great.
Overall - 7.5

(Also check out Jak and Daxter if you liked this game)

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/24/03, Updated 06/24/03