Ratings and Reviews by Jim Turner

I first played Vague when it was entered into the Spring Thing 2009 and to be honest I didn’t get it. I gave up after a few turns and left it at that. After talk on the ADRIFT forums recently about reviewing and playing games I’ve had another look and thought I would review it.

The player starts brainwashed and naked. Cliché. All the NPC’s are stationary and badly-implemented. Typical bad IF. The game starts by telling you it is likely to be bad. Usually a sign of bad IF. When I first played that’s what I thought.

Now I see that Vague is all about breaking the fourth wall. Almost looking at the game from the point of view of the player character rather than the player. It just doesn’t do it very well.

I think using locations and characters from his own stock of games was the big mistake (and I’ve told Mr Otter that). Most reviewers got hung-up on this and said so. The game is really just a treasure hunt. Like the old school way of having the player carry out random acts and finding and linking together random objects. He would have been better using clichéd locations, you know typical IF locations like bedrooms, garages etc.

It also wasn’t tested enough as it has a number of minor bugs, lacks a little polish and has the ADRIFT weirdness and all that.

But second time around I now think it is - okay. Not the best but I enjoyed playing it.

This is a sci-fi game set in the future. I found the game very interesting if a little hard at times.

As a lover of comics I can be considered a superhero fan so this is a game just for me. The special super power is pretty cool in this game, you mould your hand into things.Perhaps our hero doesn't use his super powers much, but then he doesn't really have any. I found the puzzles easy and not too many of them. I really enjoyed this game.

To me this is what I consider a good old fashioned adventure game. Nice simple puzzles, mostly finding the right key for the right door. But, what I really find fun about this game is that it has working fighting system. Brilliant stick figure fighting!

The plot is a bit thin and the setting is relatively empty. It feels right in the context of traditional text adventures but might be considered bad in modern IF. But, I like it.

I like different settings and characters, so a game about wrestling really attracted me. Normally in most games you are the boring good guy but not here. In Veteran you are unpleasant, unpopular and you have to be bad to win. Now that is more like it!

The people in this world are a bit flat and cartoonie but I took that in the spirit of the setting. The puzzles are okay, but I had to look for help a few times. Although, I have to admit I'm not the best puzzler in the world. Apparently this is a rewrite of a three hour game, which I haven't played yet.

Robert is one of my favourite ADRIFT authors. Frustrated Interviewee is just a game about a job interview and then you seem to be wandering around you digs at university. Boring or what? Then pow! you are in a fantasy game. Just great.