Ratings and Reviews by Dr.Froth

If this had been called "Spank the Elderly" or "Slap the Crap Out of My Ex-Wife" I think I would have been able to get into it more.

I mean, this is the guy who took care of the H.P. Lovecraft commonplace book stuff and has written some really great games. In fact, if you have not played any of Mr. Nepstad's games than you really should not let this one keep you from doing so.

As for fish slapping, weird as it may be, it just is not for me.



Story:

Hmm...some fish are angry with you over...over...something. They have climbed out of the sea or lake or tank or whatever and are now heading down the boulevard with murderous intent. You duck into an ally and prepare to kick ass.

Well folks...that is about it. What we have next is a "Street Fighter" type of text fighting game. (Perhaps I would have like it better if it were more like "Mortal Kombat."



Implementation:

Slap that Fish is coded very well. I did not encounter a single problem (outside of almost getting bored and quiting before the third fish). To be fair, there are some really neat ideas in here. You have to rest to rebuild your stamina (though I think the fish should get in some free shots while you do that). There is astrategy to getting in the best combination of attacks to efficiently take out the enemy.

Later on, things vary up some. You find some inventory items and the fish get a little tougher. All in all, this felt way to linear for me. Of course, if what Peter wanted to make was a fighting game (which he did) than that is probably what he wanted.



Presentation:

You know...Tads looks good. Always looks good.



Did I have fun?

Not really. I was never able to get into it... but than again I hate fighting games (with rare...rare exceptions. I liked Mortal Kombat, but not for the fighting engine... I just liked killing people).

Let me stress again my point from above. Peter Nepstad writes some great IF and if you have only played Slap that Fish than you are really missing out. You can't blame a guy for trying a little experiment now and then. You just have to remember that some experiments do not work out very well.

If the actions required to complete Beneath: a Transformation were, instead, a brutal murder of a young schoolgirl, than the killer would get away with the crime because not a single clue would have been left behind.

I love the atmosphere of BAT (what an interesting acronym). I have never read any work by Robert E. Howard but after playing this game I think I might have to go and read Worms of the Earth. The idea of horrific physical change has always been the foundation of good horror and in this case reminds me a lot of Lovecraft (hooray).

Unfortunately there is one fundamental flaw that really hurts BAT and it is summed up in my opening statement.


Story:

There is a story in here. But is it Graham's or is it Howard's? It seems like I am expected, by psychic powers I presume, to know a lot more about what is going on than I do. Perhaps this is because I have not read the book (which I felt should have had an interesting passage quoted whenever the player reads it instead of just letting them know that they now possesses a greater degree or worm expertise. What would have been really cool is to have quoted page 57 from the actual book when the player reads page 57. In fact, I have decided to buy Worms of the Earth just so I can see what it says on page 57.)

There are many things going on in this tale. We have, amongst other things, police stations with murderous cops, pet stores with dogs and owls, coffee shops, and decayed buildings. What we are missing is the point for having any of these things. Why do I need to go see the police? Why do I need a dog? Why do my feet click on the cement when I try to go up in the air?


Implementation:

Here is a quote from the "help" section of the game:

...Type anything that seems logical. If the game doesn't recognize what you're attempting to do, no harm done...

But there is harm done...to my soul. Besides, logic is a relative thing. What seems logical and natural to a serial rapist suffering from Necrokleptabeastapyraphiliaphobia (the fear of stealing dead, burning animals for impure purposes) would not seem logical at all to a devout Baptist elderly woman.

BAT requires that you type exactly the "magic command" to solve a puzzle. You can come really close, even have the right action but the wrong wording, and fail. This problem is common in many games but it is especially bad in Beneath. The hook and crack scenario in the cell is a perfect example of this.

There are no bugs that I found, only a few cosmetic issues. Hanging the rope from the balcony causes it to be visible all over the place (even places where you would think it would not be so). Implementation is not really an issue in this game so much as design is.

The main problem with the design is the lack of cluing for puzzles and the goals itself. I wandered around the map for quite a while at first, and while I really dug the setting I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. My only goal was trying to get to the end of the game. By that I mean typing a series of commands needed to reach the winning block of text. The puzzle of the game, its main purpose for being, is never stated.

When you finally get stuck (you will) and try to use the walk through (you also will) you will find another of the games design flaws. The walk through itself is a sinister, yet crafty, little puzzle. If you follow it as it is written than you are going to die. Can you figure out what needs to be changed to live? Good Luck.


Presentation:

A z-code game, a z-code look. BAT gives good examples of what I do not like about the look of inform. I liked being chased by the mad cop, I think things like that are great tension builders. I do not enjoy the clunky, awkward way in which that information is presented. Regrettably I can think of nothing that can change this, and I am not faulting the author for it.


Did I have fun?

I did in a way. I liked the creepy setting and I found the text to be engaging. All my problems dealt with my psychic powers having failed me in my early twenties. Of course, there was the rare moments of actually figuring out the right action but not being able to type it in correctly.

There are many things to like in Beneath, but unearthing them is more work than it should be. If the author were to do a re-release with a little bit better cluing as to the main goal and puzzles, and add a little more flexibility to the parser than I think this would be an enjoyable game for more people. It is not a failure, it just needs a little more work. (It is also not a failure for Mr. Howard who has generated a sale for his book from my playing of this game).

Just when you think that the salamander is going to climb into the eggnog and begin to frolic, you realize that everything is going to remain all ducks and checkers.

If that sentence did not weird you out than perhaps this game is for you. Reconciling Mother is really odd, but I kept on playing it. In fact, I rather liked it. Unfortunately it is also plagued with so many problems that the most of the time the only thing keeping you going is just to see how strange the next couple of location are going to be.

Story:

It starts out at the Miskatonic University (ahhh, good ol' Lovecraft... you know that references to H.P. is a good way to start with me). You think that you are engaging in some sort of cross between "The Thing" and "The Bourne Identity." From there however, everything descends into madness.

Here are some random samplings from the notes I wrote while playing this:

"Miskatonic University? Ahh good, Lovecraft....... Quite a few locations, better make a map.... Should Sub-Niggurath be Shub-Niggurath, I'll have to check... "This Place is more dirty than a Calcutta Brothel" Ha ha ha, that's great. But it is not Lovecraftian...... What is going on with the movies?..... Ask Monica about monkey gets the response "Hmmm, I would like to slap your monkey" Ha ha ha that's great.... Whoah, why am I humping the receptionist?.... Why am I now on a moon in outer space?.... A rabbit hole?.....

And on, and on, and on. I only visited around 70 locations, but according to Merk there are over 150 in the game. Sweet mother of Hector!

The story is like some hyper-fiction created by Hunter S. Thompson, Henry Kuttner, and an Italian pornography script writer.

You know....I liked it.

Interaction:

O.K. Story aside, this is where Reconciling Mother begins to seriously take your crotch and drive the heel of its combat boot into it... over and over and over and over and over again. Most of my notes fall into this category and include gems like these:

"You are in a parking lot. There are no cars here. It is early morning so the sky is still dark. It is cold. Although the lot has been recently plowed, there is about five feet of snow in a field to the East. Someone has dug a cave entrance there. To the North is a tall building with stairs leading up to large columns. To the West is a long, low set building with no windows. Across the Southern street is an old mansion. You see a metal sign here."

>x parking lot
The word “parking” is not necessary in this story.

(If this was an accidental misspelling, you can correct it by typing OOPS followed by the corrected word now. Any time the story points out an unknown word, you can correct a misspelling using OOPS as your next command.)

>x cave
The word “cave” is not necessary in this story.

>x building
The word “building” is not necessary in this story.

>x stairs
The word “stairs” is not necessary in this story.

>x column
The word “column” is not necessary in this story.

>x columns
The word “columns” is not necessary in this story.

>x mansion

The word “mansion” is not necessary in this story.

This happens in every single room. There almost is no interaction at all, except for items that the author intends for you to pick up. (However, I was able to examine the cork board in the hall of the science building. Why? This only made me keep checking everything.)

There were numerous other implementation problems. I can take a "a log entry two." A jar still gives the same description even after I have opened it and removed its contents. There are no quotation marks for speech. I waited for a snake to bite me for over 20 turns but nothing happened. Even after I gave Monica the nipple ring and thrashed her cookies, the item did not disappear from my inventory. (of course this meant that I could give it to her again for another visit to the sausage wallet... if only it were so simple in real life).

At some point I died in a tunnel. The game told me I was dead but the game did not end. I could jump around and look at the stuff that was not implemented in the death room. I had to finally quit the game myself and reload.

I found a bottle of booze but was told that it was not something that could be drank.

All in all, this game was in serious need of something. Not really polish... no, it needed something more fundamental. I think the author barley had a grasp on how to code in TADS. (Some might think he barley had a grasp on reality, but I like that part about him and it is this games saving grace).

Presentation:

I have always liked the way that TADS looks, so of course the game looked fine to me. I do not really remember many typos or spelling problems. (of course I spell so poorly that I might have seen a misspelled word and thought it was correct).

Did I Have Fun:

Actually, I did. Though this game is nearly impossible to play in the traditional sense, there is something that keeps you playing it. I can only akin it to watching something horrific, like a train wreck, where you just can not stop watching. With this game, you just gotta know whats going to happen next. Will there be another dragon? Will there be another slut? I am going back to outer space?

I have to say that I like Reconciling Mother. Despite its flaws, I find it to have a strange charm and think most people should check it out... with the right frame of mind. Unfortunately, its many flaws keep me from giving it a good score.

First Thoughts:

When I first downloaded all the comp games, I fired them all up and checked out the introductions to help me decide which games I would play first. When I read the opener to PETS, I thought that the game sounded great.

I wish I could tell you that it was great.... but I can't do that. In fact I can not tell you what happens at the end because I discovered a fatal bug that crashed the game. In fact, the bug was so bad that Frotz kept spitting out the error messages and there was nothing I could do except force close the file. Naturally, I have not and will not attempt to play this again.

Story:

The game begins as a condemned man is led to his cell the night before his execution. This is a very cool setting, and I had high hopes for it. You cell mate, Jimmy, wakes up and you get to have some conversations with him. Shortly after that the game takes off on wild tangents and transforms to a surreal mind game.

Implementation:

There are many problems with the structure of PETS that caused me undo grief. For instance, in a bathroom I was told all about a sink, a toilet, some wallpaper, and a light switch. 'X' sink and toilet did work. With the toilet I was told that it was full of water. 'X' water did not work. In fact, I was told I could not see the water that the game just told me I saw. I could not drink the water. I could not turn on the water in the sink. I was told I could not see the light switch. Flipping the switch was impossible.

In many instances the game would automatically scroll text before I had a chance to read it, sometimes clearing the screen. This was aggravating because I would either have to scroll back up to read it or, in the case of a screen clear, not get to read it at all.

I found myself wondering why I could get the same response for trying to kill Jimmy while I was blasting through 4D space at 1000 miles an hour that I got while trying the same action back in my cell.

And then of course, there is the fatal flaw. This happened after I had gone to sleep in master bedroom and was awakened later by the mysterious figure. When I typed "talk to figure" everything went berserk on me and I was forced to quit playing. I have not seen anyone else discussing this flaw and I wonder if it was from a strange combination of things that I had tried earlier.

Regardless, an error that crashes the game is unacceptable.

Presentation:

It looks like an inform game. Inform games looks dated to me for some reason but that is no fault of the author.

Did I have fun:

I wanted to have fun. I really wanted to like this game, but all the things that intrigued me about it in the beginning were ignored. A trip into the fourth dimension could be cool, but there needs to be a deeper level of implementation. I do not like games crashing, so that really sucked.


(I have rated this a 1 due to the fatal error that rendered the game unable to be finished to me. A game that can not be completed should not score higher than a one. It seemed that others were able to finish this game, but perhaps they did not encounter this bug. Since I did, the score stands. If the game were to be re-released without the bug, I would probably bump this up to a 2).

Join the amazing adventures of Eduard in this action packed thrill-ride of one mans quest to make it to....to.... a poetry reading?!


Story:

Unlike many of the games I have been playing lately, this is the one area where ETS really falls short. There is not even an introduction sequence to set the mood of the tale or establish what you are supposed to be doing.

Things do not improve much as you play along in search of the means to meet up with your buddy Scardanelli. I had hopes upon reading the newspaper that I was about to encounter a cool plot twist (I think it is cool when an author starts you off in a seemingly boring and mundane place only to pull the rug out from under you a little ways in) but I was disappointed. In fact, I'm not sure that the author knew exactly what he wanted to do with Scardanelli, considering the fact that you can refer to him by two different names later, one of them being connected to the newspaper. Unfortunately, that plot line is never explored or explained.



Interaction:

The coding on this is better than the story (probably because there is some code while there is not really a story here). There are a couple of guess the verb problems. "Get onto trampoline" works while "get on trampoline" does not. Several other instances of this had me reaching for the walk-through.

The instant death from the window was lame. I had accidentally typed "s" instead of whatever direction I had meant to type and then...BAM... I'm dead. I went back to see what had happened and this is what I discovered:

x window

you see nothing special about the window

climb window

I don't think much is to be achieved by that

climb out window

I only understand you as far as wanting to climb the outside

jump out window

I only understand you as far as wanting to jump

s

You jump out the window and land most unsoftly on the ground.



Now I know that it is fun to kill the player off, but there should have at least been a warning. Something like, "A fall from this height could kill a man" and then if the player did it again...BAM you're dead. That still does not explain why jump out window did not work, especially when that is exactly what happens when you die.

There were a few other issues, such as missing exits from room descriptions and a general lack of purpose. I also was able to make myself stuck in the Gym by dropping the candle and having it go out. I then had to reload the game because I could no longer move around. (Once again, no warning).



Presentation:

This looks like all the other Inform games I have ever played.



Did I have Fun:

I did not hate this game, but I did not really like it either. So while I did not experience a lack of pleasure (like one might get from obtaining frost bite on the colon), I did not have the time of my life. Doubt I'd ever play this again.



Final Thoughts:

I just can not find the point to this game. There is little to no help from the author. You are probably going to need the walk-through to get all the way to the end of this but then again I can't really think of a reason to do so. There is no resolution other than a "you win" ending of about 2 sentences. I guess this is appropriate considering that there was not much of a story to resolve.

I remember really liking "On A Pale Horse" and "Wielding A Red Sword" by Piers Anthony when I was younger. I also remember thinking that the first "Highlander" movie was pretty cool. "The Immortal" borrows heavily from both these concepts and can only make my ask one question:

What the hell happened?

Story:

This story has everything that it needs to be really deep and involved. There were many aspects about it that I thought stood out and would have been great had they been given the attention that they deserved. The idea of the thought bubbles, and how one would collide with them to absorb information was different. Crushing cubes into powder and breathing the dust to create different effects was a nice fantasy touch. But where do these bubbles and cubes come from? Why are they here? I was interested in the story enough to want to know these things, but unfortunately an answer is never really given.

The soul chamber room had a great description. I really could see the flowing floor of sand and a large multitude of baskets by the pillars. But again some problems arose in the design not being fully realized. There is food in the baskets, but why can I not take some to give to the hobgoblin? The game does not even acknowledge the food after it tells you the food is there.

This story could be very interesting but I feel it would need a larger setting to tell properly. Of course, larger settings mean more work to avoid the problems that I am about to discuss. And those problems make playing this game very difficult. It's like trying to convince yourself that it is a good thing to belt sand your face off. Sure you can do it, but the end result is probably not worth the effort.


Implementation:

This game feels like the author was still discovering what was happening in his game's world at the same time he was writing it down. It comes across to me that he was in such a hurry to make sure he told you everything because he was afraid that if he did not he would forget it all. The Immortal suffers from a lack of going back and truly implementing everything short of what is required to beat the game. This means that you are going to use the walk-through. (Unfortunately for you, the walk-through contains a mistake or two itself.)

There are events that will continue to replay even though they should have ended. There is a bug that lets you rack up more points than the game is supposed to allow. One of the most interesting items in the game is not implemented at all. Seriously folks, I have a samurai sword on me. I am the only one that thought of trying to kill anything with it? How about the thief of a hobgoblin, you know the one that is already wounded, why does the game not even understand me wanting to stab that son-of-a-motherless-goat? Did I forget how to swing a stupid sword?

Why give me a sword and then never let me use it? That makes me wish I could disembowel myself (with the samurai sword that I can never use, but inexplicably have) and save some grief over continuing to play this.


Presentation:

This game is in Inform and I am unaware of anything the author can do to really change its overall appearance. So in that case, the presentation is fine.


Did I have fun?

There were parts of this story that could be really, really good under other circumstances. The location that I mentioned earlier really made an impression on me for some reason. But as a whole I did not really enjoy this. The implementation problems and lack of world related detail (why can I not sit on the sofa?) kept me from getting immersed in "The Immortal."

The author would do well to take this concept and perhaps remake this game. I do not think the story should be abandoned, just perhaps retold in a more detailed and stable environment. The surreal, to do well, always seems to take much more work than "the real."