Ratings and Reviews by archcorenth

This game is actually fairly well-written and feels like an authentic (if unrisky) sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark. Unfortunately, there are two things that work together to make this game downright unplayable. The first is a VERY picky parser. As an example, there's a point at which you must lasso a rock shelf to climb up. Well, at least if you've read the manual, you know that lasso is possible verb you can use. But don't try to lasso the shelf and don't try to lasso the rock shelf, make sure to lasso the rock or you're not getting up there. "Rock" in my opinion is a descriptive adjective modifying shelf. I don't know normally interact directly with adjectives in text adventures.

Well, I wouldn't mind so much typing different variations in a game if I'm pretty sure what the answer is if not for the game's other problem which is that you're constantly on a timer and if you enter more than three prompts before what the game wants, you die. At least you can save, but it's just constant saving and trying and loading and trying. It ruins any sense of suspense the writing could drum up.

I was thinking about why the game includes the constant pressure of death at all. Well, Indy is constantly under that threat in the movie, so shouldn't it be in the game? I think that's fair. You should have to move quickly. But maybe there should be lots of options then. If you could quickly grab for one of four or five different options, some of which might get you into a worse, more desperate situation, but not end the game, that might feel like an Indy movie.

I really enjoyed Bob Bates's newest game Thaumistry, so I went back and am playing his old games, some of which I'd played before and some I hadn't. Some of this was familiar and some wasn't. So, I suppose I played this and never finished it. Sadly, I'm finding a slog today much as it must have been back then.

A big part of the problem is that I don't think it's very funny. This is particularly surprising because Thaumistry often made me chuckle or even laugh out loud. Some of the time this game can get me to groan which is better than most of the time which just leaves me irritated. The humor in this game isn't really jokes, it's just references to things. Do you like SNL? Well, here's a Steve Martin character and here's a Gilda Radner character. Do you like Monty Python? Well, here are the Frenchmen from the Quest For the Holy Grail. None of these characters really do anything funny. They just recite variations on the same lines they had in their original incarnation. Is this parody? I don't know. If it doesn't have any point of view on what it's referencing it feels more like plagiarism.... But I don't think anyone would complain.

The story is not very front and center. You're given a quest in the opening scene which requires you to collect various silly items scattered around the fantasy kingdom. It doesn't really develop as you play despite cutscenes playing between each chapter. The chapters are little mini adventures where you must solve some puzzles in order to attain the item. These are absolutely fine and generally logical and well-clued. I have no complaints with the puzzles, which is why I'm giving this game three-stars. But you almost have to ignore the environment to enjoy them. Also, an odd thing about the plot. There's some naughty material on the same level as Spellcasting. (it's also similar to Spellcasting in that the main character is portrayed as a completely loser and yet all the busty women immediately throw themselves at him.) I certainly have no problem with adult material, but it's just strange that Spellcasting was marketed as an adult game (that I can't really imagine anyone older than teenager getting excited by) while this was sold for everybody. It's just curious.

I really enjoyed this first Gateway and I thought this one was much better.

Between playing the two games I read the book, and the stories of the games are different enough I feel like they are different stories just set in the same universe. And if that was the intention, that's a pretty fun way to make a game and maybe more games should be like that.

I'm giving it five stars, but it's not a perfect game. The first game was actually a bit more ambitious by having the big Gateway asteroid to explore between the levels. The closest this comes to that is the Heechee homeworlds. And they are quite fun and interesting to look around in, but they are contained to their portion unlike Gateway in the first game.

The story this time though is much better with a cyclical plot that takes you back to one of the first areas, which is something I always like, and the alien planets more interesting this time, especially the planet with with these crystal snake things that communicate with telepathy and provide the most original puzzles.

I would have liked the NPC's to be more interactive. They are just there to provide info dumps like NPC's in modern games. In a lot of infocom games the NPC's actually did things both to help and hinder and sometimes both as with the Thief in Zork! I'm not sure why designers decided to stop with that. There was some intimation that your character might have romantic feelings for another character, Diana, when they mentioned her again in the final cutscene, and I was like, why? She didn't do anything useful at all and just went away and hid during the climax. Why should care about her?

So, yeah, as I say maybe not as ambitious as it could be, but in many ways it's just what I like to play, and if you think you'd like it you should try it.

Well, I thought the game was fantastic. I started on it somewhat doubtfully. I played a Mystery Science Theater 3000 text adventure based on the game, Detective, on this site earlier and thought it was hilarious and went about looking for more. The second Mystery Science Theater game lampooned a game called Stiffy Makane and that brought me to this.

I wasn't sure I was going to play this for more than five minutes when I started out. The business with references and footnotes felt very awkward and none of them were very interesting, but when I stumbled upon Julia and talk about her nose, I knew I had to play the entire game simply because I read Latin per se illustrata by Orberg. I just love the kinds of things this game lampoons and I like that having sex with characters isn't the reward for completing a puzzle. Most characters just want to have sex with you. Isn't that a better fantasy than in things like Leisure Suit Larry?

I will say that the best material in the game is frontloaded. I quite liked traveling around the Roman world and interacting with celebrities. The section in Judea was actually my favorite--and frankly the false ending there is actually the best ending. After you acquire the banana things slow down a bit. Hell wasn't very interesting to me which was disappointing even though I suppose that bit had the best puzzles. Maybe it's because it was inspired by the Wasteland which I read in school but made no impression on me. Then the Vergil section simply felt unnecessary and not very much interesting happened in it, although I suppose the duck was fun (despite the fact that I've never read Henry Miller so I didn't catch that reference at all, but I guess I put two and two together...?) But then I forgave the game slowing down in those parts because the end was fantastic again, one of the best endings of all games.

So, yeah, I think this is easily one of the best text adventures I've played. Well worth it's high rating. Strong story, lots of jokes, a couple of passages like the one with the barbarian are even passably erotic.

I mostly played this because I enjoyed A Taste of Terror, which was also translated in to English by the same person. This game, on the other hand, is not very good. It is quite small and all of the set pieces are scenes the author liked from Raiders of the Lost Ark and all the puzzles are solved the way the characters in the movie solved the same puzzles. There no real NPC's in the game, which is disappointing. The two you do meet you can't really interact with. And most dreadful of all is that there is a maze with loops that you must solve almost immediately upon setting out. Why I'm giving this two instead of one star is partly because I appreciate that effort that went into preserving the game and partly because with the likes of Detective and Stiffy McKane out there, there is just so much farther to fall. The game works. You can make your way through it. But you'd better off just rewatching the Indiana Jones movies.

This was hilarious. So happy to have discovered this in 2026 thirty years after it was made. I could hear the Mystery Science Theater robot's voices in my head when I read their lines. It was all very authentic. I wonder if anyone has ever made a map of this game.

This is a pretty bad game, and I'm guessing that's because it's one of the first attempts at a game by the designer.

I'd give it 1-star for the plot, which isn't so much as mentioned until the very end of the game, where it is delivered in a bunch of uninteractive exposition. But it ekes out two stars because the bar scene in the first half of the game which is lively and humorous, with eye-rolling dialogue. I particularly like that you are kind of left on your own during it without being pushed in one direction or the other. I think if the bar had been filled up with more to do and that had been the entire game, this could have been a 4-star game.

But eventually you go home, are optionally given a fairly uninteresting sex scene/dream sequence and then find yourself in another sort of text adventure entirely in which you mush just get from A to B and in which there is only a single puzzle and it's really bad. it's the sort you'd expect in something like a lucas arts or discworld game.

But this designer definitely improves. I'm mostly reviewing this because I liked his later games and wanted to play the rest of them.

I really enjoyed this game mostly for the characters and dialogue. Robb Sherwin is has a really great edgy sense of humor that reminds me of--perhaps--Elmore Leonard dialogue. The plot of the game was a bit iffier because it didn't totally explain what was going on. Even at the end of the game, I never learned why the girl had been kidnapped.

But I also really like the style of the game. Most early text adventures give you a starting scenario and then have you explore a vast playground where you solve puzzles--and maybe there's a bit more plot at the very end of the game.

This game has story all the way through and exploration areas are limited to just a few rooms at a time. I think this way uses the game format to its best advantage as an interactive story.

I fully intend to play more games by Sherwin (I've played two others before) and to find out what Mike Sousa's games are like to. :)

I've been writing reviews for games I've completed on Steam for a long time in order to remember my own impressions of the game (username archcorenth), but when I complete a game off of Steam I do nothing and it feels like I've left something undone. So, this is my first review of a non-Steam game so I can feel the experience is complete.

Gateway is my fourth Legend Entertainment game, following Death Gate (which I thought was fine but way overrated), Spellcasting 101, and Eric the Unready (which I think is probably the first text adventure I ever completed). The overriding design factor in Gateway seems to me to be accessibility. This entire adventure CAN be played only with the mouse (although I think that would be extremely tedious), and mapping is only required for one area in the game, and even that area isn't too complicated.

Mapping isn't required because all the areas in the game are quite small, I think this should be the usual for text adventures. After all the areas around you are described in text and stored in your memory, you don't really need to know the exact cardinal layout of everything, unless that is part of the puzzle. I think a lot of early text adventures wanted to create a place with text, but later ones are more interested in telling a story. This is of the latter category and I approve of that because text adventures one big advantage over graphical games which is that have no restrictions when it comes to story.

Gateway does part particularly well with the story in Part One. In part one, you arrive on a space station as a prospector who will fly to dangerous planets and scavenge them for technologies you can bring back to the space station for cash.
Gateway lets you explore the space station as you like and investigate things you find interesting. It gives you ideas of what to do and where and when to meet people who might give you advice. You start to build up the story in your mind this way. This is something computer games can do and novels can't, but computer games hardly ever do it! Most computer games railroad you down predetermined paths beat by beat like they are movies. It's really annoying to me particularly in RPG's where I think, all this game does is for me to fight 50 skeletons in order to read the next chapter of the book.

Unfortunately, this freedom ends once you enter PART TWO, at that point you are given a new objective (save mankind from a nebulous threat) and are told to do this and this in order to complete it. That takes to the end of the game. There are still maybe a few side things to do in space station but it's mostly because you didn't get them done in part one before triggering part two. It's disappointing. What is well-done about this section is that each planet you go feels very different from the others. I suspect that maybe Legend had each of their designers design their own planet and populate it with their own puzzles to accomplish this. This part is still fun. It like just a bunch of mini stand alone text adventures. But it's not particularly special.

That takes you up to the end of the game. I was getting a bit tired here and I cheated at two of the puzzles because I wanted to go to bed and I wouldn't get back to the game for a long time because I'm going to work tomorrow. I wish I wouldn't have for one but another one I think was unfair. It's the very last puzzle in the game and if there are any clues for it, I never saw them. There is one other place I cheated and this part I think was very poorly designed. It involves your handler you meet in the bar. (Spoiler - click to show)The handler gives you advice and then waggles his eyebrows at you suggesting he wants you to buy him a drink. You but him a drink and he suggests introducing you to someone. so far so good. but you're suppose to buy him a second drink after that to get him to introduce you to someone else! No hints and if you leave and see him again, you get THE EXACT SAME DIALOGUE you got the first time. and when you buy him a drink then, he introduces you to the first person again, whom you've already met. Why on earth should you think there is anything more to do? Personally, I think you should read that if you think you might play the game.

So, yeah, I really recommend it. It's maybe not everything it could be but it's fun and has a great opening with just a ton of detail and things to do that make the space station seem like a real place. (In fact, my favorite part of the whole game was Old Earth Trivia in the casino which gave you trivia question about things that hadn't happened yet, but that you could figure out with the trivia knowledge you already have.)

This is the first game of this sort I've ever played. I suppose it's a bit like CYOA, but it keeps track of more things about your character like an RPG. As a story, it was well-written and presented an unusal imaginary world, inspired by Europe during the Napoleonic wars. This was a very unique setting, and was it's greatest strength. The plot, however, was a bit less interesting. It would have been nice if things didn't always work out for me. I would have liked to go through some hard times.

This is an extremely short and simple text adventure that you can play online in an authorized remake at adventuron.itch.io (which is why I tried it). I'm not saying it's not worth the 10-15 minutes it takes to complete it, but I don't think you'll remember you played it 10 minutes after that.

The manual has the back story. While the knights and Merlin were away from Camelot searching for the Holy Grail, a evil "she-wizard" (the manual's word, not mine) called Crania managed to steal Arthur's sword and trap him in a nightmare. Now, it's up to you to journey to Camelot, defeat Crania, and wake Arthur from his magic slumber.

One reason why I tell you the plot here is that the manual includes a list of words recognized by the game, and spoil the final puzzle in it. Not that any of the puzzles require much out of the box thinking. Honestly, you can probably complete this game by typing fewer words than I used to write this review. At least the Spectrum colors are fun and jazzy.

This was one of the first text adventures I ever played, maybe the first, and it taught me that text adventures were bad. I wanted to experience the world of Middle Earth, an enormous place with interesting, and often funny inhabitants. In this game you no more than step out the door than you're in Rivendell and you can cross the Misty Mountains in not much time more. As a kid I think I decided to quit it complete during the wood elf portion in Mirkwood. And decided not to play another text adventure again.

I guess my first question is, where's the text? Room descriptions are sparse, and there's nothing to stoke your imagination. I guess the horrible drawings were suppose to be a replacement for Tolkien's text, as though they could possibly do that.

My next question is, where are the characters? There sure are a lot of them. The game is constantly telling you which dwarves are in your vicinity and how they seem to move in and out of the room, but does it matter to you at all? Even as a kid, this portion of the game seemed artificial. It had no effect on anything.

As an adult, around the time Anchorhead and Cryptozoic Zookeeper came out, I gave text adventures another shot, and I'm glad I did, I found just how much they could do and even can do some things graphical games cannot. Some of the best I've played are new ones like Thaumistry by Bill Bates, but now, during the pandemic, I've had time to reach back farther, and there are just as good ones from the 80's like the Enchanter trilogy, the games by Magnetic Scrolls, and the "electronic novels" by Synapse, even the original Zork trilogy. This Hobbit game does not deserve a higher greater number of stars on this review site than its contemporaries. I'd love it if somebody could explain to me why it isn't sitting down near zero. And I hope people who might be interested in trying it, don't do so and then discount all the other wonderful adventure games out there, imagining them to be similar as I did. And if you want to try some early computer games set in Middle Earth, I would say the two RPG's by Interplay are perhaps still the best games made with the license. They do everything I'd hoped this game would, they make Middle Earth seem just as big as in the books and let you explore every cranny of it.

In The Wizard of Oz text adventure, you move through a story rather than explore an area, like in most interactive fiction games. I think more games should work like this, since it plays more to the genre's strengths. It's relatively good for kids because you don't have to map anything. Essentially, you move from scene to scene from the book, and solve little puzzles along the say. --That is until you get to the Emerald City, and that's why I want to review this unreviewed game. Once the Wizard sets you the task of killing the Wicked Witch of the West, the game starts bringing in characters and scenes from the book's first sequel, the Marvelous Land of Oz. I think this is a really good idea, and if they ever try to do a new adaptation of the book as a movie or TV show, this would be a good way to make the new version different enough from the original to not invite constant comparison, as well as to handle the problem of Dorothy not being in the second story if their planning to do a series. Also, the sequel tells you so much about the Land of Oz and its history and answers so many questions you might have from reading just the first book, it gives you a much fuller experience.

The graphics (in the C64 version) are quaint, and I enjoy the little tunes the game plays for you from time to time. The writing is appropriate for kids, but perhaps not as witty as the source material. I think this game doesn't receive the attention it deserves.

(As an aside, if you're playing this from a download, because, after all, magnetic disks don't last forever, don't play the DOS version, I'm pretty sure all the DOS versions available online are missing their second disks and your game will end when you get to Emerald City. C64 has better art and sound anyway.)