TRATEL64

Experimentation is crucial in order for people to come up with new concepts and inventions, but then again not many experiments or prototypes reach the general public most of the time. The same is true for video games as well, because many of the current genres are based on brave experiments that have been forgotten over the years. Naturally, the trend is ongoing, so developers are still coming up with new ideas.

TRATEL64 is a unique adventure game with puzzle, visual novel and RPG elements, although it’s very difficult to spot any familiar concepts. In essence, it is designed as a comedy with a lot of violence, gore and bad language, while you as the player have to guide the main character through a variety of ludicrous situations. There are many problems with the game, however, so keep that in mind before going in.

To begin with, the story is all over the place, and it doesn’t help that the grammar and the writing itself are poor to say the least. In essence, you play the role of a guy named TRATEL, and the number signifies how many people he killed. The main story shows you the journey from 0 to 64, and you get to make a few choices along the way that sometimes influence TRATEL’s actions.

One of the most annoying things about the game is the fact that everything moves incredibly slow, including your character and the cutscenes. Not only that, but the cutscenes are not skippable either, which means that you are forced to look at a simple sentence for an excruciatingly long period of time. People can read a lot faster than the developer assumes, so there’s no need for such long pauses.

TRATEL moves painfully slow during the gameplay sequences as well, since he cannot run or do anything of the sort. It’s also worth pointing out that the fixed camera points lack perspective, so it’s difficult to move around the environment sometimes. As for the graphics, they are actually not bad, even if they are obviously exaggerated and sometimes too colorful.

TRATEL64 has a good premise, but the execution is confusing and way too slow. Thus, it’s difficult to remain excited about the story when the simple cutscenes linger for minutes while nothing of value is being said or shown on the screen.