Reviews by Victor Gijsbers

Iraqi Invasion is a piece of interactive fiction based on a fake interactive fiction transcript by Matthew Baldwin, that can be read at http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/001561.html. The original, where you supposedly play Bush, is quite funny; but it uses many non-standard commands such as "monger fear" and "railroad congress", and it involves many 'objects' that have not been described by the game.

Consequently, without some heavy changes, you can not make an interactive fiction game out of it. Nobody is possibly going to guess that the command to get out of the Oval Office is "GO PHOTOOP" if the game never actually tells you that you could do this. Or that you have to type things like "MONGER FEAR" in order to invade Iraq.

Unfortunately, Iraqi Invasion does not involve any significant changes at all, and consequently, the only way to play it is by typing, one-by-one, the commands from the fake transcript. But that means that you could just read the transcript instead of playing the game.

As far as I could tell, there are not even many alternate responses incorporated (which could have made the game an interesting addition to the transcript). There is almost nothing you can examine, for instance--which is a pity, since, as a non-American, I would have like to be able to examine Jesse Helms and John Ashcroft and find out who these people are and what they were saying about Iraq.

The conclusion, then, is that a funny IF transcript cannot necessarily be turned into a successful IF game, at least not without some major work being done that has not been done here.