Main game
2.75 average rating based on 4 ratings
Tough for me to rate this one. 4 Stars means "I really liked it." I did. It was a minor obsession for my household for a while. We had a map of Africa with notes all over of stuff we were finding. We had a typed guide (an early player's guide?) and wrote notes for it. It was really in depth. It was really the only video game I remember my dad getting into, but we had long discussions on it at times.
At the same time, it's tough to rate something that early really highly. I don't think it would translate well today. But I have to put it 4 stars if I'm going to rate it for what it was - a really interesting and ambitious game.
Some interesting things to note:
1) It was open-world. In 1985. That's right. There was no path you were supposed to take. No "Go to this town next." You got some very vague clues, but you were exploring all of Africa, and you didn't know. And you could spend hours hunting things down, crisscrossing the continent.
2) The NPCs reacted to you. You could play it good or evil. You could …
Tough for me to rate this one. 4 Stars means "I really liked it." I did. It was a minor obsession for my household for a while. We had a map of Africa with notes all over of stuff we were finding. We had a typed guide (an early player's guide?) and wrote notes for it. It was really in depth. It was really the only video game I remember my dad getting into, but we had long discussions on it at times.
At the same time, it's tough to rate something that early really highly. I don't think it would translate well today. But I have to put it 4 stars if I'm going to rate it for what it was - a really interesting and ambitious game.
Some interesting things to note:
1) It was open-world. In 1985. That's right. There was no path you were supposed to take. No "Go to this town next." You got some very vague clues, but you were exploring all of Africa, and you didn't know. And you could spend hours hunting things down, crisscrossing the continent.
2) The NPCs reacted to you. You could play it good or evil. You could rob the people blind or be their friends. This function isn't as detailed as it would be now, but you had the choice, and the other characters would react to that. In 1985. I mean, when I first played Fable, which was the first game I personally played that allowed you to kinda choose what sort of character you would be, I was blown away by that. But even in Fable, that function wasn't all that detailed. Frankly, by the end of the game, I couldn't converse with a woman (and some guys) in the game without them proposing marriage. But it was cool even so, and Heart of Africa was way ahead of the game on that one.
I never actually found the treasure. I'd love to take another crack at it.