Hamilton's Great Adventure

I finished this game after 11 years (one of the games I just pucharsed and left to rot quite literally).

4/10

Nice graphics
Decent Gameplay (its playable)
Semi-boring story (easy to understand but i guess it was more targeted to children)
Not Hard (in fact quite easy, the only "hard" stuff would be more akin to finishing 100% all levels)

From my own POV however:
Gameplay was really boring and tedious (you need to move a bird for extra points all the time, for a self completionist it was really annoying to control both the main character and the bird at the same time)
Story didn't catch my interest (expected a little bit more)
Sometimes the game outright crashed (unsure why, but it didn't helped it crashed right before finishing a level)

Good game for children, but even then I don't think they'll play it if any other game is available (if +16 or above, dont touch it, you'll probably sleep before finishing the first levels)

Hamilton's Great Adventure stands up well. It has a nice 3D feel to the levels which are well designed and not too difficult. The graphics are detailed and colourful. The camera controls are useful. Completing a level with a gold rating often requires specific steps but no precision is needed and it is very satisfying upon completion. Progress results in larger levels that are more complicated but the solution is not that hard to find. Unfortunately I get a bug not too far in that halts play under Windows 10. 7.5/10

Fatshark Quality (which also includes a random crash), and you will have to install nvidia physx otherway it will not run.

5/10 or 6/10 game. (i suggest get it on a sale)

The game is not bad but its not amazing game but its not bad, is well designed, the gameplay involves platform puzzle in which you will face ground that you can only step ones. There will be also some timed puzzle events that becomes a little annoying, there is no shame in searching resolves in youtube.

Its an ok game. But probably will not play it twice

Why is this "verified on Steam Deck"?

Game crashes as soon as the actual game play starts, right after the cut scenes.
Also, game has zero update history after its release in 2011, so don't expect it to be fixed.

Steam needs to remove the "Verified on Deck" tag.

Good value if you can grab it on sale. None of the regular stages are very difficult, but some of the optional ones can get tricky. All but one achievement can be unlocked solo, but there is one that requires a 2nd controller, which I found disappointing. Planning out your route before moving is important, but you get unlimited time at the beginning of each stage to fly around with the bird companion without any score penalties.

Of the extra abilities that you unlock by completing each world, only the dash boots are really useful. Most of the enemies you encounter can easily be tricked into stepping off a ledge or crushed by a closing door, and are not really much of a threat.

Fun casual puzzle game, where you're just plotting a path through each level to get all the gems, keys, and hit the exit. There are handful of later puzzles which are annoying as they rely tight timing to get the gold medal, but the rest are satisfying enough to play through.

Hum... entertaining but might get frustrating. This is a puzzle/platformer game. The graphics are good. The music is okish. The story is kinda lame and infantile.

No bugs or crashes. Works fine on Win 7 (as should be, stop complaining it doesn't work on win 10. It is advertised that it won't swing outside vista and 7).

Overall, it's a fun game but is also repetitive and it will stop being a puzzle later and become more like an annoying precision platformer with a non-cooperative camera. There's no way to rebind the keys. This is an old recipe of dying numerous times till you memorize the road or till you rage-quit. Becomes boring. It includes cards and it's cheap when on sale. Unless someone fixes the compatibility issues, it will be reserved for potato machine owners or those that saved an old one just for the pleasure of not joining the win 10 complainers. Even with all its shortcomings, it will give you a few hours of decent, but not great entertainment. Guess it's a blue thumb up, but barely.

What is Hamilton's Great Adventure ?

If youre looking for a simple, chilling puzzle adventure game to chill when you want to relax a bit, something easy to get into that doesnt get to stressful or demand too much from you, this is a great pick, hamilton is decently sized for what it is, it begins easy and has a satisfying gameplay loop and gets more challenging in the later laters, you will die a lot but the more you learn how to use the abilities the game gives to you the better you get, its a fun experience, its a tile based adventuer game focused on dealing with simple puzzles and reaching the end of a level, theres 44 levels in the game not includind the bonus levels which I think are like 20 of them, so theres pretty ammount of content for people who want more after beating the game's main levels, it is what it is a pretty simple indie game if thats what youre looking for during a sale this is pretty cheap, want a easy to get into indie game to chill then this one is a good pick, I had fun with it.

AVOID - DOES NOT WORK IN WINDOWS 10 an if forum posts are to be believed DOES NOT RUN ON AMD chips. Game crashes as soon as launched. Not help in forums worked.

Picked up as part of the FatShark sale bundle so unable to refund.

Should not be allowed to sell games that do not work.

Information / Review English

Hamilton's Great Adventure is a puzzle / adventure game developed by Fatshark.

Gameplay / Story

The intrepid adventurer Ernest Hamilton and his ingenious bird Sasha are on the trail of the ancient mystery of the lost continent and take the player on a fantastic journey around the world! In four different game environments you have to outsmart lurking enemies, overcome tricky obstacles and collect as many treasures as possible in order to secure a place on the leaderboard. But only players with excellent problem-solving skills with ingenious timing can achieve the goal.

Pro

+ captivating principle
+ crazy opponents
+ funny sound effects
+ relaxed / mystical music
+ idyllic adventure backdrops
+ many optional treasures
+ Achievements and trading cards

Contra

- dry drawings as cutscenes
- dull and boring story
- short playing time

Conclusion

Hamilton's Great Adventure is an old-school puzzle platformer that's a bit like Indiana Jones.

Information / Review Deutsch

Hamilton's Great Adventure ist ein Puzzle/Abenteuer Spiel, welches von Fatshark entwickelt wurde.

Gameplay / Geschichte

Der unerschrockene Abenteurer Ernest Hamilton und sein genialer Vogel Sasha sind dem uralten Rätsel um den verschwundenen Kontinent auf der Spur und nehmen den Spieler mit auf eine fantastische Reise um die Welt! In vier verschiedenen Spielumgebungen gilt es, lauernde Feinde zu überlisten, knifflige Hindernisse zu überwinden und so viele Schätze wie möglich einzusammeln, um sich einen Platz in der Bestenliste zu sichern. Aber nur Spieler mit hervorragenden Problemlösungsfähigkeiten mit einem genialen Timing können das Ziel erreichen.

Pro

+ fesselndes Prinzip
+ verrückte Gegner
+ witzige Soundeffekte
+ entspannte/mystische Musik
+ idyllische Abenteuer-Kulissen
+ viele optionale Schätze
+ Multiplayer
+ Errungenschaften und Sammelkarten

Kontra

- trockene Zeichnungen als Zwischensequenzen
- öde und langweilige Geschichte
- kurze Spielzeit

Fazit

Hamilton's Great Adventure bietet dir ein Puzzle-Plattformer von alter Schule und erinnert ein wenig an Indiana Jones.

Does NOT work on Windows 10. Under any circumstance.

I was able to leave the game on the crash popup for an hour to get my card drops, so it's got that going for it.

older game with crashing issues. good puzzle elements but the fact that it crashes on start up, or crashes when an enemy is hit, or crashes when you are hit means i cant recommend it at this point

A nice looking and fun puzzle game from the PS3/Xbox360 era of a type that we don't see so much today on PC or console. Sadly it isn't compatible with Windows 10 and will crash in short order (even if you enable compatibility mode). I suppose it's understandable that the developers haven't updated it; I doubt it brings them any income. I think it's a great pity though, when games are lost to time like this. Do not buy if you are on or plan to upgrade to Windows 10.

Hamilton's Great Adventure is a game that I can't recommend. It's not that it's a broken game (though there's reports of computer problems, so buyer be ware). It's not that it's insanely hard or insanely easy. It's just not a very good game. If you have nothing else to play, maybe you'll get some enjoyment out of this, but the problem is I wouldn't spend money on it.

The real problem of the game is the puzzles aren't well laid out, you can choose to either fly your bird over the level and understand the layout, or you can choose to run the level a few times and make mistakes. Both ways take about the same time, and there's not much here that will be difficult, except for a few annoying puzzles.

The other issue is this game is overly graphical. If the game had a great iconic look to it, that would be one thing, but the graphics in this game make it harder to solve the puzzles as the player sometimes isn't clear what a panel or a location really looks like. Going to 3d isn't as big a problem as the art choices. When you can't tell where the switch is or what is a switch, that's not good.

But really the biggest problem on this game is it's just not that much fun. The feedback loop of trying a level and failing because of X isn't fun. The challenge of "mastering" each level is pretty low. It's more of a game that will be beaten by repetition rather than skill. Even for a puzzle master, they'll have to waste their time trying to see the level, rather than figuring out the level that's pretty weak.

Personally I would recommend playing something else. Hamilton's great Adventure isn't a good name. It's not really an adventure, and it's certainly not great. Honestly I'm starting to question if his name is really Hamilton.

I usually end a negative review by recommending other games to play instead of this. For this game, well there's not many games like this (because there's bad design choices) but Talos Principle will give you far more enjoyment. Portal 2 is amazing, any of the Cyan Worlds games (Myst, riven) will give you a real adventure, The Witness is fantastic. And the thing is all those games cost more than this game, but they are worth the extra money.

This game's installation is bugged. At some point in time Nvidia changed the location where the PhysX dlls get put. This game's installation seems to only be checking the old location, not the new one. It "fixes" this problem by going and installing an OLDER version of PhysX. Which still won't work, because it's still probably in the wrong spot? There's a thread in the game's forum where some sharp users discuss a few fixes for the problem.

I don't really like either fix, because I'll have to remember to re-copy the DLLs from the new location into the game's own directory. If I get this problem with enough games (haven't yet) I may do what the video a user there shared and drop 'em into the System folder. That's never a great place to dick around, but it would get the files onto a path that any program anywhere will manage to find.

This is stuff we shouldn't need to do to make a game work. Even a game selling for $1. For a $10 game, that's almost beyond forgiving.

This is a very absorbing and colorful game! I was going in to this game with a grain of salt, being a man that doesn't love puzzle games. But as it turns out, it is truly an amazing game! this game is worth every penny spent on it, no regrets! I highly recommend it.

This is a rather long review, so if you want a quick summary of why I recommend this title just skip to the Results section and read from there.

Fatshark created a fantastic little puzzle game which puts you to the test. Hamilton’s Great Adventure pushes out levels that pose mysteries and threats around every turn.

Story:
Hamilton’s Great Adventure starts you off telling the stories of your great exploits to your granddaughter. You relive Hamilton’s glory days as you try to get the parts for a machine required for a purpose you will learn if you beat the campaign. You and your bird, Sasha, must complete puzzles from Brazil, Egypt, India, and the Secret Islands. As the game progress Hamilton gets further into his tale and new characters are introduced. The game includes hilarious dialogue, with an interesting story that keeps you guessing, and levels that keep posing new challenges. As you progress through the game you obtain answers to the mystery and you learn all about how the story began.

Gameplay:
Hamilton's Great Adventure is a puzzle solving game which knowing the answer is the key. Unlike some puzzle solving games where you can see the solution but be unable to complete the challenge because of a simple annoyance in clicking a button at exactly the right time. This game puts your mind to the test to solve puzzles by completing challenges by using the correct answer. It’s fun and rather simple, yet some puzzles are a little more difficult than others. The games graphics are not the best, but they are crisp and the story is pleasant. Sasha can be difficult to control and managing two characters is rather difficult if you are not on your toes.

Menus:
One of my major gripes is that the in game menu is annoying to navigate. They tried to make the menu look like a book, but this is not very useful as you don't actually know what information is on what page. Ultimately you may have to flip through the whole book if you are looking for a simple answer.

Hints:
The pink vials are used to power up Hamilton’s special abilities. You can play as Sasha at the start of the level before activating the timer, so if you want to you can gather lots of the pink vials before even technically starting a level. You can also scare off the flying blowfish that attack Sasha by using a taunt when they are about to hit Sasha (it causes them to blow up and float away).

Result:
Hamilton's Great Adventure doesn't pull you in keeping you on your toes from level to level; yet, the game offers fun puzzles which you can solve during your spare time. I would like it if they had checkpoints. I don't play too many puzzle game so maybe they all don't have any checkpoints during levels. If you like to solve puzzles and you're tired of traditional puzzle solving games that challenge a user based on luck or precise click timing then this is for you.

Pros:
+Simple gameplay without too many commands to learn
+Smooth movements
+Fun and rather complex puzzles
+Fantastic difficulty curve, the puzzles get gradually more difficult rather than exponentially
+Nice art style which makes the games simple graphics seem rather elegant

Cons:
-Very difficult menu navigation
-Not a very riveting story (though it’s a puzzle game so you're here for the puzzles not for the tale)
-Can be infuriating when you have solved the first part of the puzzle, but have to keep resolving to get to the second part of the puzzle

A fun puzzle game with an Indiana Jones-style storyline and cute cast of characters. The gameplay reminds me of the old Crash Bandicoot games, running over platforms, collecting gems, and trying to get to the end of the level without dying. An excellent game for the $1.00 I paid for it with a 90% off coupon.

After first few levels you have seen everything this game has to offer. Nothing really changes, the stages just get longer and more frustrating. The gameplay boils down to trial and error. Even one misstep will make reaching the goal impossible and you have to keep starting over until you memorize the path perfectly. Sometimes a failure isn't even your fault as enemies can break the path too, even if you tried to keep them at bay with the otherwise completely useless bird. (Local co-op, yeah right.)

If this were just a calm, slow-paced puzzle game, I could have lived with that. But no, there are "timed" puzzles as well and they really irk my nerves. For example, there was this one stage in which you have to keep a snowball rolling so it will eventually reach a button which opens the gate to the exit. You have to keep opening gates and eliminating enemies from its path, but over half of the time you can't even see, where the snowball is going, no matter how you try to turn the camera. So besides learning the right path, you have to have almost pixel-perfect timing too.

Utterly boring game with unlikable characters and a story that nobody cares for. I paid about 1€ for this and still I think I got ripped off. Not recommended for anyone.

I'm not sure whether to call this a puzzle game or not. All you have to do is to get to the goal, hitting switches, dodging environmental hazards and the occasional "enemy". Once you found the correct path to take, you can finish a level without much trouble.
Collecting coins is optional but to unlock more levels you'll need a certain amount.

Dont bother with the DLC since all it does is add 3 additional levels which arent too interesting nor challenging and you'll be done with those in no time.

I guess this is a good choice when you feel the need to take a break from other games that piss you off.

On a side note: Whenever I start this game and the splash screen "Plays best on Alienware" shows up I just cant help myself and I have to laugh.

One of the most polished, addictive and, dare I say, adorable puzzlers to come out in the past 20 years. The design of each and every one of the 63 levels is absolutely perfect. Puzzle fans: Play it.