A sierra styled adventure game about a lovable loser in the wild west. The puzzles are well designed and most of the voices work though some can be irritating. The writing is often funny and clever. recommend for fans of sierra games.

An Amateurish game with adolescent themes. Really the biggest waste of money. If your looking for a solid adventure game, look elsewhere.

Al Emmo And The Lost Dutchman's Mine is a game by the same group of people who, free of charge and in their spare time, created 4 fantastic Sierra remakes of King's Quest games and Quest For Glory 2. Those games were as good, or even a bit better, than the originals with voice acting and nicely polished background art. So the stakes were high for their first commercial game.

And what a disappointment the game is.

In comparison to their labor of love subjects, Al Emmo comes out as an amateurish try to step into commercial game making. Under the name Himalaya studios the developers manage to accomplish almost all mistakes I hate about adventure gaming: illogical puzzles, bad voice acting, bad script and badly executed moving between places.

The amateurish values of game are visible from the get go, when the game starts with 3D cinematic, which would have been sub standards in the early 90's, not to mention in the 2000's. 3D isn't luckily the only means of narrating the cinematics, but comic panels used in game aren't that well done either. This all is lazed with such an annoying voice cast, that it makes you thank higher powers for the mute button.

I would have loved to say, that Al Emmo is nicely done Leisure Suit Larry in western atmosphere, but now only positive thing I can say about is, that hey, at least the background art is good.

Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman's Mine (AE) does remind me Zac Mc Cracken and the Alien Mindbenders and of Leasure Suit Larry (in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, the very first Sierra one)

AE has the clean interface of Zac Mc Cracken (cleaner, even, a very good job by the designers here) and the same kinds of riddles that are mostly made in a fairly solvable way.

So, the basic premises are in place for five stars - why did I end up giving it only three? Well, graphics and animations are occasionally poorly made, especially the "lip synching". Nothing really horrible, but together with some poor attempts at 3D animation it is enough to loose half a star.

Then the ending annoys me enough to make the game loose another star. I won't say anything more about the ending, and I did have fairly fun getting there, so 3˝ stars is a fair grade in my opinion. (Rounded down to three since the game had a better grade than that when I posted the review.)

Well worth the $3 I paid for it, and probably worth $5 if you like point and click adventure games.

If you're a fan of old adventure games in the likes of "Monkey Islands" or any other Lucasart old-school title then this is for you. I really had a blast playing this! Graphics are dated sure but hey, it's like I said "old-school". The story is pretty funny and managed to make me lol more than once. Music is OK and voice-acting is hilarious although getting used to al's voice may take a while. The adventure is lengthy enough to keep you entertained for a couple hours. Puzzles are mostly inventory based and sometime pretty goofy...truly a gem!!! Note: probably not intended for a younger audience as humour can be a bit crude at moments.