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Some days you are bored and just want to kick back and play it safe by using your brains & stealth. Other times, like when you had a bad day at work, you feel like killing everything that moves. Is it possible to make a game where you get to decide how it plays?

by Trevor Hateley
(8/4/98)

The Goods
Quick Peek: Amen: The Awakening looks like a next generation shooter from the screenshots, but it could possibly be a pioneer in the death of genres by giving players more control over their world and providing multiple ways to finish each task.
Release Date: Summer 1999
Developer: Cavedog
Publisher Cavedog
Homepage: Amen: The Awakening
When you buy a game, you expect it to consistently play a certain way. Load up Quake2, and shoot your way through a few levels before you get stuck looking for a switch. If you play Commandos for a couple hours you will learn how to use stealth, which the game requires. Grim Fandango has you picking up objects trying to figure out a puzzle that the developers made for you. When you get stumped on these games you just need to find one of the many strategy guides available and they will all tell you in almost the exact same way where you find the switch, how you blow up the dam, or where to use a certain object.

When Amen: The Awakening is released next summer, strategy guides will fill the Internet, but each one will be unique, and this will no doubt confuse the ignorant gamer. I will use the New York subway act, which is an actual level in the game, as an example. Be aware that I made up this certain task, but from the information I have gathered something similar to this will happen many times in the real game. The ignorant gamer, lets call him Happy Puppy, gets stuck right at the beginning of the act where he has to get by a heavily armored guard blocking the entrance to the subway. Happy checks the strategy guide on his favorite action gaming site, and they tell him to load up on armor and ammo, then attack the guard with brute force. When Mr. Puppy tries this he fails miserably because his hand-eye coordination really isn't as good as it should be.

Thinking he might have missed a good place to load up on weapons or armor, Happy checks a strategy guide on an adventure gaming site hoping that they will have a more detailed explanation on how to out-gun the guard. To his surprise this strategy guide tells him a completely different way to get around the bad guy. This guide tells him to break the window of a nearby shop, and pick up a shard of glass. Then sneak around behind the guard and stab him in the back before he has a chance to fight back. This way no sound is made and you won't have attracted any other enemies. As you probably guessed, Happy just isn't good at sneaking around, because he doesn't realize that running makes noise. Frustrated with strategy guides altogether, our friend runs mindlessly around the streets of New York until he stumbles upon another subway entrance two blocks away from the original guarded one, so he gets in and completely avoids conflict. The greatest idea behind Amen: The Awakening is to have multiple ways to finish each task, so the gameplay style will change depending on how you feel like playing that day.

What's Amen all about??? (next page)