Like its namesake album, Queensryche's new Promised Land CD-ROM has been a long time coming. Fans first heard that a CD-ROM was in the works in May of 1994, a full five months before the album was released. At that time, the CD-ROM was expected along with the album. Things didn't go as expected - release dates told to fans slipped at least ten times! Meanwhile, the Promised Land album went platinum, and Queensryche toured extensively, so fans weren't left completely disappointed. Despite the delays, the fruit of their labors should redeem Queensryche in the eyes of their fans. The two-disc CD-ROM set pushes the envelope in every way. Expectations will be high after the wait, but even the most jaded fans should be in for a few surprises.
Old and new fans alike should enjoy the Big Log disc, a virtual copy of Big Log Studio - the cabin in the San Juan Islands where Queensryche recorded the Promised Land album. Dozens of audio and video clips are scattered throughout the cabin, and may be found by looking closely at everyday items. The clips can also be viewed together in the form of a short video documentary. Also hidden in the cabin are three full-length videos for songs from the album. Big Log pales in comparison to the Promised Land disc, which is truly in a league of its own - a hundred minutes of digital audio and video, 70 computer-generated digital environments, and two thousand high-color ray traced images, all packed onto one disc! In a Consumable interview several months ago, Michael Wilton said that the game would take 30 hours to win, but he may have underestimated.
The sheer volume of visual and aural information is overwhelming. The graphics are vivid, ranging from realistic to absurd. There are rich sounds and hundreds, if not thousands, of items which interact with the user in various ways, and puzzles galore. Even the members of Queensryche make appearances in unexpected places. When members of the band appear, they invariably offer ethical morsels, in the form of encouragement, scolding or advice. Despite Queensryche's success in the world of music, its members have retained a strong sense of values which are the basis of the puzzles within the game. The ecology of each world on the disc can be endangered in some way, and once endangered, each world can be saved. The game is by no means a "shoot-em-up"; the ultimate goal of reassembling a five-part Native American totem pole can be reached without violence. The victor's reward, of course, is a performance of a never-before-heard Queensryche song entitled "Two Miles High."
This CD-ROM set is certainly not for the faint of heart, or the faint of hardware - it requires at least a 486 PC or '040 Mac, 8 megabytes of RAM, 16-bit color and a dual-speed CD-ROM drive, and a recommended system is at least one notch better in each department. Each musician's world is a game unto itself, and with short-cuts and connections between the worlds, it is very easy to lose one's sense of direction. Once users get past the initial shock and sensory overload, though, both discs are full of challenges, fun, and opportunities for mind-opening experiences - things that Queensryche's fans have come to expect from "The Thinking Mind's Metal Band."
