Long in development, Eidos has finally released the first ad for Anachronox, Tom Hall’s epic new RPG from much-troubled Dallas developer Ion Storm.  As soon as you flip to the ad, the portrait of the main character, Sly Boots, strikes you.  Look to the right and you find out his name and his occupation.  Already you have a vested interest in learning more about this game.    You get even more intrigued as you read the perplexing tagline, “Sometimes, the most deadly poison is your past.”

The screenshots in the ad stand out, depicting a number of different locations in the game.  Unfortunately, it’s a bit hard to tell whether this is a first or third person game and the text does little to explain how the game is played. (In reality, it’s a third person RPG).  However, this is a minor point compared to the biggest problem with the ad – the horizontal text layout.   Some marketing maven must have done a study showing consumers retain more information if they have to rotate an ad 90 degrees to read the text.  My view?  Most people won’t even bother to rotate the magazine, especially when you’d have to do it twice here to read everything printed on the sides.

The worst of it is that a lot of vital information is listed along the sides including the storyline, information on the different game worlds, and a brief synopsis of the gameplay styles.   All of this is important information that really should be displayed in a much more reader-friendly format.  The way it is, most readers won’t even notice that there is important text along the sides.

These issues aside, the ad for Anachronox leaves a lasting impression and definitely makes you want to find out more about the product.

Grade: B+

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