Reviews by mjhayes
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Has its ups and downs, March 29, 2022I played this as the last story of the Zork Anthology. Computer games were getting more sophsticated, so if another Zork game were to be made, Infocom would want to utilize the latest technology. Beyond Zork was wonderful and would be a tough act to follow, so rather than continue the storyline from there, the idea was to have another Zork game retroactive to the original trilogy.
That was the first mistake, in my opinion. Movies or games that take place prior to the originals usually try too hard to tie loose ends together. We see that not only in the prologue, but in the endgame as well. I also didn't like the character Dimwit, or the various room descriptions that smacked of Dimwit's orders of magnitude.
The game is big in terms of number of rooms, which I normally would enjoy. There are over 200 rooms, not counting all the duplicate rooms that comprise the 400-story tower. But a number of rooms have no significance and seem to only have been added to pad out the game size. I also wish there had been more balance. The castle takes up a large percentage of the world map, and there is precious little time spent in places like Antharia and The Gray Mountains. I do like the little icons with mini graphical representations of each room though.
Given that the story takes place prior to Zork I, it does make sense that the object would be similar to the original - find all the items of interest and bring them to the proper place. Additional reliance on feelies is kind of a nice touch. You'll be reading through the calendar multiple times to learn a few clues vital to completion.
What adds to the challenge is the jester, who appears at random points, and quite a few non-random points as well. You'll depend on him for help and several items, a few of which he gives you randomly. This makes walkthroughs difficult to create as well as follow, because you then have to hold off exploring certain places as long as possible. I do like a couple of his appearances though, like in the Inquisition.
My biggest gripe is the presence of various puzzles which are simply tacked on to the quest. On the one hand, I can appreciate the graphical representations of such things as the Towers Of Hanoi and the "peg-jump" puzzle, but what are they doing in a Zork game? Further, the way some of them are presented is just ridiculous, like the parody of "The fox, the goose, and the grain". Others, like the Room Of Three Doors, I'm guessing people more likely "solved" through save-scumming, rather than figuring them out normally.
Finally, there's the ending. (Spoiler - click to show)All throughout the game, I expected to stop the curse of Megaboz. It took a long time to realize I was meant to fulfill the curse instead. The fact the castle shrinks into the white house from Zork I was just lame, not to mention that the jester turns out to be Megaboz himself, and dubs thee Dungeon Master, who would later torment adventurers in Zork III.
I'm glad I came across the Zork games in the mid-90s, rather than when they were first released. It must have been a disappointment for fans in the last days of Infocom to see the Zork series end the way it did, until Return To Zork came along.
A departure from the standard Infocom parser, November 30, 2020Related reviews: infocom, menu-driven, graphics, point-and-click
I had played this game twenty years ago and enjoyed it, but I recall there was one place where I had to save-scum my way through. Recently, I gave this another try and figured out the apparent intended solution without cheating. Since no other walkthroughs adequately explained how to solve that puzzle, I created one of my own. It is now posted on gamefaqs, along with an in-depth guide for just the one puzzle.
As for the game itself, I liked it because the menu-driven system (making optional use of a mouse), which replaced the old parser, made it painless to play through multiple times. Combined with the beautiful illustrations and fantasy storytelling, this is a masterpiece that many players might have missed.
Gameplay is mostly linear with some path-branching. Getting through the entire game is mostly based on trial-and-error, particularly with respect to use of magic, since essence is scarce. There are some decisions you make early in the story that determine whether the game is unwinnable near the end (like (Spoiler - click to show)taking the spyglass and (Spoiler - click to show)collecting hawkbane), and some randomized apparently-mundane detail buried near the beginning of the story is essential toward solving the last puzzle. If you enjoy the story enough, having to play through multiple times shouldn't matter to you.
I wish Infocom had been able to complete the Golden Age trilogy, especially since the endgame leaves a mystery as to one of the characters you meet along the way. Perhaps the other two stories will be written someday.
A good risk taken on an established franchise, May 16, 2019Take a game that has had a successful trilogy, add a bunch of elements people might like, and hope it's received well. That seems to be what Infocom did with this addition to the Zork series.
I'll begin by saying the downside to this, just to get it out of the way since there's nothing else I don't like about it. To me, this game was a turning point. Future Zork games were just campy, with the exception of the radical departure that is Nemesis. Also, most interpreters I've used don't display this game correctly. Fortunately, I was able to play it again in all it's original glory once I started using Termux, a Linux environment for Android devices that doesn't require rooting.
As for the upside, I like everything else that's new in this game so much that I wish it was done for more IF game sequels. It's obviously heavily inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, with the avatar creation, turn-based fighting, character growth, barter system, randomized maps, and randomized item placement. The screen is divided into four main sections, which is why it's necessary to play this in a text-based environment. In addition to the usual Status Bar at the top, there's a pseudo-graphical minimap, with a window to the left containing room descriptions, and below all that is the usual call-and-response text parser area.
Many of the scenes were ridiculous, like the ripoff from The Wizard Of Oz and part of the ending ((Spoiler - click to show)a magic spell to turn granite into fettucini), not to mention some throwbacks to other Infocom titles. Some puzzles were just too convoluted as well, like getting the helmet. But all that was eclipsed by the immersion into this world with the game's new features. A couple scenes were touching too, like the interaction with the Minx. The reaction of the Implementors when they become aware of my presence was a very nice touch too, in addition to the easter egg: (Spoiler - click to show)trying to open the mailbox pictured on the wine bottle's label. Messing around with the various magical items was a lot of fun, and I felt a great sense of accomplishment too when I achieved the highest level in the game.
While I was playing through the game though, I couldn't help but think that the audio tracks from the CD-ROM version of Return To Zork would fit here. Imagine the Morpheus Nightmare music as a backdrop in the tavern cellar, the Whispering Woods music in the jungle, or the forest music in the ... forest. Event-driven tunes would include the creepy "abandoned hardware store" music when finding the Circle in shambles, the Troll Fight music when an enemy appears, and even that pretty little tune from the intro when you open the Sea Chest. If I put some effort into it, I could probably modify the stand-alone PC-DOS executable file to make the game do just that.
That leaves me with a couple questions. First, what does the game look like when played on a VT220? Second, are there any Android apps out there that display this game correctly?
Obviously a satire piece, May 13, 2019Whoever wrote this was most likely learning to program Windows 3.1 games and decided to start simple, with a throwback to Colossal Cave or something, but with only a handful of rooms and a very limited lexicon. It's good for all of 30 seconds or so. If you read the included instructions, you will realize the author wasn't taking this game seriously at all. All the more so because it's described as "HippoWare." For fun though, I took a little time to see if the other games in the "Bovine Software Cow series" actually existed. This game could use a good MiSTing.
Not what I was expecting from a Dystopian piece, January 8, 2016I entered into this story, expecting an interactive story not unlike 1984. It certainly seems to start off that way. You play as a minor bureaucrat working in a huge government tower. People have been going mad lately, most recently your immediate supervisor - and the story begins with your having an appointment with the Grand Inquisitor.
Sounds interesting when you begin, and there are a few interesting puzzles, a couple of which I thought were a little unfair. The first is (Spoiler - click to show)what it takes to get into the Bureau of Records - (Spoiler - click to show)there are two solutions, both of which remind me of the kind of tough puzzles commonly hurled at players back at the time this piece was written. The second is (Spoiler - click to show)sabotaging the security system for the prison doors. In all likelihood, you'll have to backtrack at least once for an important clue or item, leaving someone waiting. To be fair, the author did write the story to make it impossible to get into an unwinnable state, and does give the player ample opportunity to avoid death, so you don't have to worry so much about save scumming.
At one point, you're faced with a choice whether to continue the story or let it end. If you slug it out to the end, you'll discover (Spoiler - click to show)there are no good endings. You can either die or spend the rest of your life in a mental hospital, where you will receive regular electroshock "treatment." So having ended the game halfway through is really the closest thing to a good ending there is.
What I was hoping for in a true story of the Orwellian genre, was a large back story about how oppressed the citizens are and how thoroughly corrupt the government has become. There's hardly any of that here. Instead, you ultimately learn that the spreading madness (Spoiler - click to show)is fabricated by the Inquisitor himself, who is implanting people with Augmented Reality gear and projecting sounds and "three-dee" images that only one person hears or sees, and then using that as "evidence" of their loss of sanity and putting them away in the State Hospital. All that because (Spoiler - click to show)attendance at the public execution trials has been declining lately, and so all the time you spend in the latter part of the story, (Spoiler - click to show)breaking out of prison cells and running away from guards, was all staged in advance. You had become an unwitting contestant in a game show of life-or-death.
If the story had been advertised for what it is, and didn't lead me to believe it was an actual interactive struggle against a totalitarian regime, then I would have liked it better. The length of the game is just right in my opinion, not too short and not too long, and there aren't too many puzzles. It's worth a couple hours of your time, and that's all.
Not only meets but exceeds the expectations set for an Andromeda sequel!, December 11, 2015I played this game immediately after playing Andromeda Awakening. To be honest, I didn't have very high expectations for this game, because Awakening had set the bar so high. Awakening was about one of my favorite concepts: bearing witness to The End Of The World and being one of the only survivors. Apocalypse picks up where Awakening left off, so it could only continue the concept with this premise: TEOTW has already come and gone, and you're probably the only sentient being left - now what? Precious few games and movies touch upon this idea.
The first thing that bears mentioning is the emotional impact of the game. Barring all the derivative titles and focusing only on Awakening and Apocalypse, there are two possibilities here. Either you will play this game first, or you will play Awakening first. Either of the two choices will have a different effect on you, and neither one is better than the other. If you play Apocalypse first, the flashbacks to Monarch will hint at happier times, with the ominous oncoming storms presenting you with a mystery as to how it all ended. The beginning, where you are sitting in the hyerotrope, hurtling through space, with nothing to do but look around, gives you a chance to see the growing supernova which is all that's left of your home planet. There is also the room which is described as a spitting image of a boulevard back home that you remember so well, now devoid of traffic or life.
In my case, I had already played through Awakening, so I was disappointed at first when the hyerotrope came to a stop after crashing into some sort of space station, and I walked around in no immediate danger for the first time. This was a contrast from the constant struggle to survive through a landscape that was succumbing to a neverending series of earthquakes. Was this one of the mechanostations? It couldn't be, since the nebula would have devoured them all by now. My disappointment changed though, once Logan came onto the scene. I knew right away this was the substitute for the e-pad which I once had had during Awakening, and which I enjoyed using because it gave the player all the background material one desired to illustrate the galaxy. It would be a spoiler for me to disclose more about Logan.
There are a few things implemented here that seemed new to me for an IF game: an embedded title screen image and an accompanying tune. The tune seemed to fit, but I chose to mute it out and listen to Dona Nobis Pacem by Peteris Vasks instead: it did a much better job for me of setting the right mood. Whereas you could get a list of possible directions in Awakening by typing "exits," now the list of exits is given right in the Status Window, so you don't need to ask. Directions you haven't explored yet from each room are highlighted in all-caps, negating many of the navigation woes common to IF games. The world model is pretty simple, but I found the lower-tier rooms to be confusing to follow on the included map, although I like the way it's illustrated. That's another thing that adds to the mood: the feelies. It's worth your time to download these as well.
The best new feature in my opinion though, is the modernized scoring system. Now there is a list of achievements, which you can access by typing "score." Quite a few of the achievements are for (Spoiler - click to show)finding creative ways to die, but be warned: using the UNDO command or restoring your game will affect your achievements list, so you might want to just start over from the beginning each time. The game is short enough and so enjoyable that you probably won't mind. Another feature is the built-in hint system, which is why there are no walkthroughs posted as of this time of writing. This electronic throwback to the Infocom InvisiClues provides only solutions that are relevant at the moment. One criticism though is that no hints were available after I had forgotten (Spoiler - click to show)how to get the countdown sequence going, and "Fat" help you if you forget the destination from the nav-pod, based on an earlier conversation with Logan.
There are a couple of imperfections that bear mentioning for people who have finished the game already. (Spoiler - click to show)If you know the right thing to say to Logan, you can access the pathway to the Central Processing Unit, which then is written as if the countdown has already begun. Asking Logan about the sparkling crack in the Air Duct will present you with a question as to whether to have it jettisoned. If that question can be answered, I haven't figured out how yet. You also will be stuck in the Reliquary, since you're not ready to finish the game and since the nav-pod isn't there. (Spoiler - click to show)The countdown is 40 minutes, but travelling from one room to the next is often described as taking longer than a minute, such as the 15-minute ride on the train between the two active terminals. There is also a "-- long --" walk between rooms within the Hanger and the Docks. But the countdown varies between one minute per turn and one minute every few turns.
There is one derivative title worth mentioning, and that's Dreaming. There are a couple references to Dreaming within Apocalypse, such as (Spoiler - click to show)the name Gettare Rinors and (Spoiler - click to show)the fact there are four other people still alive somewhere, adding promise to another sequel. If you're new to the Andromeda saga, I suggest playing them in this order, despite their listed order on IFDB:
1. Awakening
2. Dreaming
3. Apocalypse
Then, if you want more, try out Tree and Star, Ascending, Genesis, and 1983, the last of which is a rewrite of Awakening as a throwback to 1983 IF computer games.
Another game that tried to expand upon the Andromeda storyline, December 10, 2015No doubt players of Andromeda Awakening would know the bar was set very high. Andromeda Dreaming was by a different author and was short, but managed to capture the spirit of mixed wonder and helplessness as to why everything was coming apart. This is another derivative work by another author, but whereas Dreaming plays like Photopia, Ascending plays like Chicks Dig Jerks. The dialog, once again, is multiple-choice, and the story seems to be composed of two halves which are a bit sloppily joined together. The main character, who turns out to be a well-respected gang leader, also fits the CDJ mold.
As with the other derivative titles, there are multiple outcomes, which adds a little to the replay value. The game is mostly puzzle-less, save for one long maze which you may or may not have to navigate through, depending on the path you chose. The addition of this maze takes a lot away from the storyline and was entirely unnecessary. The story itself is a bit of a disappointment too. I was hoping since playing Awakening that I would have a chance to visit the old mechanostations and see what life was like there while they were still inhabited, but I had expected something different altogether. Instead, I had hoped to witness either the beginning or the end of civilization up there.
As with Tree And Star, play this game if you just can't get enough of the Andromeda saga. Just don't expect it to live up to the others.
Too detached and unpolished, December 10, 2015I had played this game with high expectations after playing the other games in the Andromeda series. Whereas Andromeda Dreaming added some interesting backdrop material for fans of the series, this piece feels dispensable. It has a lot of spelling and grammatical errors, which suggests that it was rushed. Gameplay is linear and suffers from a severe case of "guess the verb," which all but strips any enjoyment from the story. After I played all the way through and learned I could achieve a better ending, I started playing again, only to quit when I forgot the exact commands necessary to complete the first sequence in the computer lab. It just wasn't worth the aggravation.
I did like the interplay of events between the main character and his wife, plus the old man who is a central figure in the plot. There was a lot of action & suspense (gratuitously) written into the storyline, which takes place before the events of Dreaming and Awakening, and which made the game feel like "Star Wars: Episode I." I just feel the saga was better without it.
If you're a huge fan of the Andromeda series, don't mind having to install Hugo, and are not irritated by major design flaws, then feel free to give this a try. Whether you feel it belongs with the rest of the Andromeda games is up to you.
Short, puzzle-less, and a good addition to the Andromeda storyline, December 10, 2015Since I only recently discovered the Andromeda games, I had no idea about the competition, or about the supposed controversy the original game had generated. I played through this piece only after completing Andromeda Apocalypse, because I wanted to play through them all in what I thought was the proper order. Looking back, I wish I had played this immediately after Andromeda Awakening, because parts of Apocalypse would have made a little more sense, like the reference to Gettare Rinors.
Progress through this story is very much like Photopia, only you play as the same character the whole time, going in and out of dream sequences. Choices you make during conversation will affect the final outcome though, so there is a little replay value. The story takes place concurrent with the events of Awakening, but with a different character in a different place. Overall, the story adds a nice backdrop for fans of the Andromeda games.
Just what I was looking for in an IF game, December 10, 2015One of my favorite concepts in novels, games, and movies is that of a world that is falling apart despite the main character's best efforts. Games like Riven tried to capture that feeling but fell far short. In this game, that is the central premise.
I should begin by saying I have only recently discovered this game and have only played the Final Cut. It begins with a terse room description and from there quickly builds up the mood and then the atmosphere. You immediately learn that your colleague has just been assassinated in an effort to keep secret what is in your scientific research notes, and you have a sense of urgency to share your findings with the University. Only you never make it there because (Spoiler - click to show)the first disaster strikes which threatens the solvency of the planet. Shortly after that, you realize there is an even greater danger than that.
The mood is adequately set by having the player - a humble, nerdy, non-athletic scientist - break down in tears more than once on the way to the next train. Adding a friendly, reassuring character was a nice touch, (Spoiler - click to show)although I wish it had been a little longer before he had been killed off. I do like the plot twist when you discover (Spoiler - click to show)the First Initiative, and it would be nice if there had been more like this. The one journal you do find isn't enough, and actually feels disconnected from the rest of the story.
Consulting many different topics in your e-pad gives you an opportunity to learn as much or as little about the game setting, which also sets the right mood. I like that it isn't necessary in most cases to look up much of anything, especially if you're playing through for the second or third time. There are also subtle references to other IF, such as the description of the e-pad as a "Guide to the Galaxy." The ending is the best part in my opinion, but I won't give anything away here.
Fun, but doesn't compare to Robots, September 18, 2015A couple tweaks to Robots gives us Zombies. Instead of manipulating the bad guys to collide with one another, now you manipulate the bad guys to collide with pits. There are two styles of gameplay, one with deep (bottomless) pits, and one with shallow pits which disappear when a zombie falls into it.
Still fun, but I like Robots better.
A bit of a disappointment for die-hard Zork fans in 1997, September 18, 2015The '90s was a turbulent decade for quite a few game franchises, Zork being no exception. Infocom was on its way out, but fortunately or unfortunately, along came Activision to the rescue. Return To Zork was the first multimedia Zork game, but sadly what would seem to be the last game that was truly Zork. Zork Nemesis was a beautiful game with an interface that wowed laypeople and seasoned gamers alike, but was Zork in name only.
So when Zork: Grand Inquisitor came along the following year, it seemed to be the best of both worlds. It had the same next-gen panoramic interface that Nemesis had, making it forgivable for falling into the "Myst-wannabe" genre, but had the same characteristic quirkiness of classic Infocom titles. To make things even better, a few guys now at Activision thought to throw a bone to the IF crowd by co-releasing this free IF piece.
I downloaded it with the expectation that it would be a true "Zork IV" (not Enchanter or Beyond Zork) but I was quickly disappointed. There was no sense of carefree spelunking with this one, if only because the player is commissioned by the Grand Inquisitor to explore a newly-discovered section of the Great Underground Empire. It's short too, more so than I was hoping for. What really ruined it for me though, was getting an actual verbal description of a grue, and also walking into a room that turns out to be a Grue Convention Hall. I know that other Infocom games like Journey had made the connection between orcs and grues and had illustrations of the orcs, but because those weren't Zork games, I looked the other way.
Another thing that irritated me was the description of the entrance to the hallway "the size of a large boulevard." I knew that a central character in Zork history was Lord Dimwit Flathead the Excessive, famous for his outrageous sense of proportion, but this over-the-top description shattered my "suspension-of-distaste." I will also refrain from talking about the rat-ants that make their return from Beyond Zork.
Now that it's not 1997 anymore, I can say that in hindsight, I'm glad this game was developed, since I believe it's better to have something mediocre than nothing at all. I just wish it had been better among the original Zork games.
An excellent example of z-abuse, September 18, 2015This "abuse" title uses colored text, a mouse interface, and high score saving. The only thing missing is timer routines, since it's a turn-based solitaire game. If anything, it's a diagnostic tool to see what your interpreter can handle.
The game itself takes about two minutes to play, putting it into the "coffee break" genre with high pick-up-and-play value - and with high score retention, it has high arcade replay value. My par is 3,000 points. I had exceeded 4,000 points once.
Unique and fun among the other "abuse" IF games, September 18, 2015It won't take you long to figure out how to play this game. The plus side is that it's fun. On the other hand, the control scheme I find to be a bit unintuitive. The key bindings for diagonal movement are in a different place than the key bindings for orthogonal movement. Still, you'll probably find yourself coming back to this game more than once.
Hilarious in a few places, September 18, 2015I like this MiSTing even more than the one for Detective, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the original game needed spoofing because of its extremely primitive design, not for being so laughingly awful like Detective was, and so the emphasis on the MST dialog is on that aspect of the game. Another thing is that this MiSTing has an intermission, which I found to be hilarious.
Playing through the game was actually pretty enjoyable with the heckling that stripped it of any seriousness. The original "game" itself was just an interactive stream-of-consciousness set to an unordered "maze of twisty little passages." I did enjoy the room descriptions with the MST comments added. Just be aware that you'll probably squeeze only about a half-hours' worth of enjoyment from this piece.
An interactive LisP programming tutorial made into an IF piece, September 18, 2015Programming tutorials tend to be boring, but not this time. First, play a few rounds of classic IF to wake a genie, and then he will decide to play the role of a teacher.
Internally, there isn't much to this piece, which is why the file size is relatively small. But trying your hand at introductory LisP programming and then having an NPC check the results each step of the way makes it surprisingly fun.
A fun little diversion, September 18, 2015RobotFindsKitten has been ported to a lot of different platforms, and now it's available in IF. It uses a lot of different functions which not all interpreters support, so there's a chance you'll need a different interpreter to try this out. You will need arrow keys as well.
The "gameplay" (although this isn't much of a game) is simple: move the robot around, touching various objects until you find the one that's Kitten. You can change the "difficulty," which is merely the number of objects in the playfield.
What's fun about this piece that's self-described as a "Zen Simulation" is the humorous descriptions of the various objects. Every person who has ported RFK to some other platform has probably had more fun coming up with a list of object descriptions than the players have had finding Kitten.
If you have a few minutes to kill, give this one a try. It doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is.
Mediocre, but fun, September 18, 2015If you read about the game before you try it, you know that you play as an attractive female college freshman who has not yet turned 18, and is stranded in the desert due to car trouble. That alone implies that playing the game will be a bit of a guilty pleasure.
Sure enough, it is. It's not very well-written, but it's not all that bad either. Although the game progresses linearly along one of two major paths, it leaves the player free to experiment in a lot of different ways. There is a time limit, but it's a very generous one, once you've handled the immediate emergency of finding shade before high noon.
What I like about the game is that most of the "inventory objects" are not necessary to complete the game, so you do not have to be a pac-rat and collect everything you can get your hands on. In many cases, more than one solution will solve a problem, and in some cases, the objects have no use whatsoever. Another thing is that body parts as objects were implemented very well here, and the game had received honorable mentions for that aspect.
There is some IF "inside humor" as well, which you will either enjoy or groan at. For one thing, try (Spoiler - click to show)opening the trunk of your car and counting the dirty laundry - you might recognize that number. The usual easter egg commands are recognized as well.
What I don't like about the game is that some scenarios don't seem to fit with the character. Crossing the road without looking both ways first will sometimes cause you to get hit by a car. For one thing, a young woman who has made in into college should instinctively know to look both ways first. Plus, you're out in the middle of the desert, where you can hear an oncoming vehicle from half a mile away. At some point, you might try (Spoiler - click to show)touching yourself, which results in a canned message with a slang phrase. Do it multiple times and it will cycle through a list of slang phrases with the same canned message wrapped around it.
The game is not difficult to complete at all, although a few solutions were obtuse, like getting the tow truck to re-appear at the service station. Because you often will wait to let time pass by, you can enter a number with the usual "wait" command to wait for a given number of turns, knowing that two turns equals one minute. I did uncover an interesting bug, which I'm sure will never get fixed. (Spoiler - click to show)Try attacking the driver of the gray pickup after you enter the pickup bed, before it pulls off.
In summary, this game goes down in IF history, in neither a good nor a bad way. The author went on to write some of the most memorable IF to date, so this can be seen as a sort of humble beginning, all the more so if you view the source code.
So watered down it's hardly worth the time, September 18, 2015Naturally, somebody would think to port Eliza to IF, since users originally interacted with it through a "command prompt." I had played around with Eliza in my college years, about the same time that I was introduced to modern IF, and so I immediately recognized the name.
It's a disappointment. For one thing, it's just Eliza here, without any of the virtual patients that had been created to interact with Eliza, such as Zippy, my favorite. Another is that most of the text I was able to enter before isn't recognized here. About all I could get it to recognize was so little, it would make the original experiment seem to be a grand failure.
Pointless, but interesting, September 17, 2015A lot of effort went into having a large "lexicon" of names to choose from when spawning a new girl to hit on at the tavern where you spend the first half of this short game. There is also a list of various personalities for the girls, complete with a multiple-choice system of things to talk about in an effort to get the girl's phone number. Among those personalities are the usual college stereotypes (milf, control freak, ex-nerd, goth, neurotic, etc.)
Too bad not nearly as much effort went into some decent writing. For one thing, you are carrying a pager. If it beeps before you had examined it, you will have missed your chance to find out what it looks like. Beyond that point, all you get when you examine it is what's on the display. There is a tremendous amount of dialog between your character and his sidekick, a "shifty heartthrob," and a lot of it is just awful. The author seems to have been as drunk as the characters in this game.
Then, all of a sudden, after a barfight, you're in a room with a few other guys, getting ready to go grave-robbing. The story kind of nudges you along from here until you either live or die at the end. There are really no puzzles to speak of, save for figuring out how to scale the fence to the cemetery.
So what makes this game memorable? The first half, the bar scene, has plenty of replay value. Be advised though, there is some sexuality in this game - but then, if you didn't quit after one minute, then you're probably not the type of person that would care.
Bad, but not horrible, September 17, 2015Those of us who were taking intro Computer programming classes in college probably clunked out something like this, or at least daydreamed about it. Admit it. My first attempt at an RPG had an interface not much better than this.
Having to enter whole words to navigate might be cumbersome, but at least the game is slightly enjoyable once you get used to it. This is one of those games that should be MiSTed.
More of a rant than a game, September 17, 2015Besides being very hastily written, I knew not to expect much from this excuse for a story when I looked out the window and got the description, "It's a beautiful sunny day. You have a sudden urge to play Nintendo." Imagine my (lack of) surprise when I gave up trying to open the padlock on the refrigerator and ended up reading a long rant about body image acceptance, or some such. Move along; nothing to see here.
Another gag, September 17, 2015If you were amused by such files as Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die, then you might get a kick out of this, before you delete it.
A menu-driven prompt replaces the traditional parser, but to good results, September 17, 2015This was ported to IF from an earlier computer game, using a menu system to input user commands. The menu resides in the Status window of the game, and there is an option to change the number of rows for the Status window. The game guesses, based on the interpreter you are using, the maximum number of rows you can set it to. This worked out great when I was using xzip, which displayed the Status window in a separate window.
As for the actual story, it's pretty good for its genre, which is cybernetics. You play as a hacker who was recently assassinated. Your consciousness remains alive in cyberspace, but with your body being in a comatose state, that means you can't disconnect from the "Net" or else. Luckily, you received an e-mail from somebody who is willing to give you new life in a cybernetic body in exchange for your services.
The game had one minor bug which caused me to get stuck at one point, but with the game having only a moderately-sized map and a limited choice of commands, I never was stuck for too long to lose interest in the story before I finished. If your interpreter can support this game, it's worth a try.
One of the more interesting pieces of '80s IF, September 17, 2015This is a game which I got as part of the Interplay's 10th Anniversary Anthology. I found it strange in that I liked the two oldest games the most, this being one of them. This game included a fictitious newspaper, which is something I admired even more. The early commercial releases of Infocom games included printed material (which you often had to refer to throughout the game, as a means of copy protection) and odd trinkets, which added to the delight of the gameplay experience. That is something lacking in newer games these days.
Tass Times In Tonetown is set in what the '80s MTV generation thought the future would be like. One thing you discover pretty quickly is that Tonetown citizens do not take kindly to strangers. You'll probably die several times without knowing why, until you read the newspaper articles a couple of times over.
Some of the puzzles were strange, and there was a fair amount of inventory management that you had to do. It had icons for common commands and your inventory slots, but I don't think I ever got the mouse to work with this game. It obviously relied on some kind of proprietary early mouse driver.
The strange people and locations kept the game interesting, and I enjoyed playing it through multiple times. It's worth a try.
Excellent for 1984 - dated by today's standards, September 17, 2015I got ahold of this game as part of the Interplay's 10th Anniversary Anthology. The box art and the accompanying CD audio track with the installer made this game immediately captivating.
It's a rather simple game compared to most IF pieces, but the engine that draws pictures with each room gives the game a unique look. Maybe it's because I'm such a huge retro fan that makes me enjoy the pixellated CGA look.
One thing to know is that the name of the game is to recover your identity, and you need to know there is a command to think about names and places, in order to jog your memory. Between the simplicity of the world model and the use of Condor to help you when you are stuck, this game shouldn't take too long to complete. If you've read The Bourne Identity, you'll see the obvious similarities here.
Probably the best piece of IF - should be recommended to IF newbies, September 16, 2015On every new computer platform, it's only a matter of time before somebody writes an IF interpreter for it. After downloading some interpreters for some new devices, the first game I reached for was Anchorhead. It was a new game at the time I was a lurker on the IF scene, and I remember all the rave reviews it got even then.
To this day, I can spend hours at a time replaying the game to look for alternate solutions to puzzles, or to see how somebody will react to something I hadn't tried before. Although Lovecraftian horror seemed to be a too-common theme among IF writers of the day, and I'm certainly not a Lovecraft connoisseur, I enjoy this game for its integration between being an "open world" game with a lot of real estate for an IF title, and its ever-deepening mystery.
What makes this game so enjoyable is that it progresses in difficulty throughout the story, as any game ought to do. Many other IF games simply throw difficult puzzles at the player from start to finish, making them unenjoyable, in spite of how well-written they are. First, this game captivates the player with an excellent description of a generic backwater New England coastal town, and has room descriptions that usually avoid simply telling the player "you can't go that way." By the time the player has settled into the town as much as the main character has, then it's time to ease into uncovering the mystery. That's the other thing that makes this so enjoyable. Instead of being presented with a collection of puzzles to solve, progress at first is made through extensive research, both into the family history as well as the town's folklore. The vast amount of reading material keeps me interested in the game even when I'm not playing. Finally, there are often "second chances" at solving various puzzles. This also leads to the replay value, as it creates interest to find out what the other solution is, and also to find out what would have happened if you had left something undone.
Only recently, I stumbled across a bug, which made me interested to find out whether there would be another revision. As it turns out, the author has a "director's cut" in the works. I hope I don't have to wait until November 2017 to try it out in its entirety.
A gag game based on a comic from a magazine review, September 16, 2015Chances are, there are not too many people who remember, but in 2001, when Nintendo had announced the release of a new Metroid game for GameCube, game critics feared that it wouldn't make the transition to 3-D. One magazine from that time had a three-frame comic showing worse things that could have happened to Metroid. One was to make it into a text adventure game. The other two were to make it into a Dr. Mario-style puzzle game, or a rhythm game not unlike Space Channel 5.
The author must be one of the few other people to have read that, because before long, there was a TADS game based on that very idea. It is deliberately primitive, to emphasize just how bad it would have been to actually turn Metroid into a text adventure game. Just shoot metroids as they come and use healthpacks when necessary. Repeat until you die.
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