An adventure port that hasn't aged that well…
Countdown shares a bit of its structure and its interactivity with Tex Murphy. However, while the Tex series was a bit more mature, a bit more well put together and more attentively designed, Countdown doesn't really have that ace up its sleeve. The problem is apparent immediately. The developers wanted to cut development cost by animating the player character via CGA, however the end result is a hot mess of a characters whose animation frames look so fake and out of place that it hurts. Ok, say you have the stomach to take it, the rest of the interface is clunk land incarnate: the classic well developed interface of olden days is in its full glory, in a game that honestly could have done away with many of the options. Story wise we get one of these amnesiac looking to trace back its own story, a la Sanitarium though without the same storytelling prowess or attention to detail. So, ultimately, I was left to believe that this is a budget, rather bland and soulless game, and while I can't really say that it is unplayable or that it might not be enjoyable, especially if you don't mind the clashing graphics of the Commodore 64 era, it is however a hard sell. Maybe watch a video of the game in action before deciding for or against it.
