With music by Bruce Broughton and the London Symphony Orchestra, Heart of Darkness truly shines in the sound department from start to crescendo. An interesting tidbit about the music during gameplay is that there usually is none; you see, the developers left the large variety of environments suspiciously silent, with little more than natural environmental sounds to bring the game's many locales to vivid life. Intermingled between each of the game's eight enormous levels, Heart of Darkness' storyline is brought to brilliantly illustrated life by both prerendered Full Motion Video segments and beautifully orchestrated musical interludes. Heart of Darkness is, without a doubt, one of the most realistic games you'll ever see. Every single background, object and character makes use of smooth animation and a palette of sixteen million colors, on nearly every screen. This is clearly the case in the more organic stages, where the grass waves in the breeze, the sun shines through the forest canopy, vines hang lazily from the treetops and the shadows dance across the walls of natural corridors and come to life. Enemies have a surprising amount of personality and unique behavior; even with hundreds of enemies on screen, they all manage to act with different mannerisms. Heart of Darkness, much like its older brother Out of this World, is an adventure/puzzle title, with very strong emphasis on the puzzle half.

  A generous amount of brain-benders await even the most savvy and clear-thinking gamer. Some of the puzzles are quite logical, while others are a simple exercise in trial-and-error. However, unlike other titles in the genre, Heart of Darkness also challenges the player with a large variety of enemy conflicts. Making use of three methods of dispatching enemies, Heart of Darkness is definitely more action-packed than a typical puzzle platformer. One particularly useful method for defeating Andy's many dark adversaries is to make use of his homemade Plasma Cannon, which can be continuously fired by holding down Triangle or Circle. Unfortunately, you don't get to use this particular weapon for very long and you'll eventually resort to the second method of dealing with his many enemies: running. Yes, it's cowardly, but definitely much safer than staying in one place. A little ways down the line, Andy acquires some special powers, which can be used to fend off the hordes of darkness, much like the Plasma Cannon. By tapping Circle, Andy can fire a small, but quick green blast that takes out most enemies. By holding down Triangle for a few seconds, Andy can gather even more energy for a larger, much more powerful blast that can take out even the biggest enemies with a reasonable amount of speed and precision.

  As you probably guessed already, Andy's Plasma Cannon and special powers can be aimed by either pressing one of the eight directions on the digital pad and shoot, or more precisely by holding down Circle or Triangle and then carefully adjusting your aim. Of course, the wide variety of villains aren't going to take this lying down; even Andy's weakest enemies can easily overwhelm him by sheer number alone. Enemy artificial intelligence is very good, sometimes to the point of becoming a little annoying, as enemies can dodge Andy's firepower, fly, regenerate, run, duck, breath fire and even grab onto Andy and hold him, which can be remedied by slowly alternating between pressing left and right to break their grip. Andy can also run, by holding Square and pressing left or right, and jump, by quickly pressing X; double jumps can be achieved, by pressing X twice in succession while standing in place or while running. When ducking and double jumping, Andy can avoid enemy fire. Andy can also climb walls and other objects with hand and footholds by pressing the appropriate direction; Andy can also jump from footholds by leaning either left or right and pressing X. When jumping to another climbable surface, pressing X mid-fall will make Andy grab on and hang. Andy can also shoot at his enemies with his special powers while climbing. For those who are thinking seriously of getting the game, I must warn you first. If you're expecting Heart of Darkness to be fast-paced, don't; this title is a thinking man's game and it requires a very careful evaluation of every puzzle, conflict and situation, and an extraordinary amount of patience as well, for those not used to the pace and flow of this type of game. If you have a major lack of either patience or clear thinking, you may want to look elsewhere.

  Unfortunately, I have to admit that, as well made as Heart of Darkness was, I wasn't always engrossed. The last couple of areas in Heart of Darkness really disagreed with me; sure, fighting horde after horde of overwhelming baddies is great fun, to an extent, but the last few enemy encounters in the game left me in a very foul mood more than once. Luckily, the enemy encounters up until the very end had done a fairly decent job preparing me to face the seemingly insurmountable amount of enemies near the end of the game. I could also complain that the control is not always as responsive as it could be, but I won't, as there is a very vast difference between the way an action platformer should control and the way a puzzle platformer should control, and I understand that difference. One thing I definitely would have added, though, is more restart points. Having to trudge through an average of three screens to reach a restart point is a little annoying and doing the puzzles on the first two screens over and over again in order to reach the third seems tedious and unnecessary. In the end though, Heart of Darkness is quite a decent puzzle platformer, with a little bit of action thrown in for good measure, a title that is both challenging and enjoyable from beginning to end. And, in my opinion, if that's what Amazing Studios was trying to accomplish with Heart of Darkness, then they succeeded in every way.
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