Black Diamond
Black Diamond Fever is a 3D platform game that was developed by ITE Media in the Hugo series and published by Electronic Arts for the PlayStation and PC. It features Hugo the Troll, a popular children TV character of Danish origin. Hugo the Troll’s popularity was biggest during the 90s but like many TV shows and games characters its fame slowly fell out of favor. Although aimed at a younger audience, this game is a good little plat-former that fans of the action and arcade genre will find very enjoyable and entertaining.
Black Diamond Fever game revolves around the evil Scylla who is back and wants to take over the world by finding a way to become the most powerful witch of all time, and this time she has in her possession the formula for supreme evil. The only problem is that she requires very rare black diamond’s which are found on the jungle island where the Kikurians live. She comes up with a plan with Don Croco’s help and takes the entire Kikurian community prisoner and forces them to work day and night in search of those black diamonds. One of the Kikurian elders asks Hugo the Troll to liberate them by stopping Scylla’s plan before it is too late. Hugo will have to collect all the diamonds within a restricted time limit or there is going to be trouble. Hugo is the Kikurians’ last hope and the player will have to be do all his best to ensure he achieve success over Scylla.
Black Diamond Fever involves playing as Hugo the Troll to stop Scylla the Witch from terrorizing his people. To achieve this, the player will have to collect all the red diamonds and take on enemies throughout various levels of increasing difficulty. Throughout the game, the player encounters enemies whom he has to defeat and free the captured friends. Once he defeats the enemies, they will turn into black diamond’s which are collected and in turn free the slaves. The enemies encountered include oysters, mummies, monkeys, ghosts, alligators and crocodiles along with doors through which they can spawn back. Hugo attacks using his whip and a single hit only stuns the enemy while the second finishes him off. The challenge is in trying to avoid the enemies until you have collected all red diamond because if a player kills them too early, he will only receive coins or power-ups. Each level is time restricted and any player who takes too long in a level will be in trouble as all the enemies will get riled up and move much faster making it extremely hard to beat them using Hugo’s whip.
Black Diamond Fever has rather simple controls, like the game’s premise, but it is also very responsive. Although the levels are very colorful they do not have much to them. However, there are a lot of levels in the game, which gives the game a great deal of value. Generally, it is very easy it is to die in plat-formers and this may make this game unplayable which will cause players to soon abandon it. This game provides a good avenue for a player who like challenges as it occasionally has very tough obstacles to beat. However since it is aimed at the young audience and considering that kids usually avoid obstacles and enemies by frantically moving around and throwing everything they got at them, they will die a lot more times causing frustrations. At the same time considering the game is a 3D side-scrolled game and there are many more like it, it may
Feel as if one is playing a Despfte offers in a bigger game. The game’s sound is minirraI at best and - screenshots seem pix-elated even when played on a decent computer. Despfte these few shortcomings, the overall impression left by this game is that everything about it is lust amazing. Although Hugo, as a character, is very much targeted at a younger audience Black Diamond Fever game does not lean on the character tie-in so much, so its solid game-play is the real draw here.
