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1-9 of 9 >INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction Plotwise, it's as if somebody chopped up Mikko Vuorinen's Leaves (another escape-from-the-institution game whose name had only tenuous relation to its contents), added two tablespoons of Andrew Plotkin's Spider and Web, garnished with a sauce of Greg Ewing's Don't Be Late, threw in a pinch of Ian Finley's Babel, put the mixture into a crust made from tiny pieces of various other text adventures, stirred, baked for 45 minutes at 350 degrees, and served it up for this year's competition. Now, I'm not entirely convinced this is a bad thing. I think that lots of great works of art, interactive fiction and otherwise, are really just inspired melanges of things that had come before, so I'm not particularly opposed to such derivation on principle. For me, though, some of the derivative aspects of The City didn't work particularly well. This was especially true for the Spider and Web stuff -- I felt that the game crossed the line between homage and rip-off, heading the wrong direction. In addition, the convention of waking up with no idea of who you are or where you are, despite how well suited it is to IF, is starting to feel very tired to me. Perhaps I'm just jaded, or burnt-out, but when I saw the beginning I said "Oh, not another one of these!".
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| Direct link | Add a comment - Edo, July 24, 2021 1 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
A short surreal loop with no save, restore, or undo, February 13, 2016by MathBrush The City has some great descriptive writing, but suffers from a few problems. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Remove vote | Add a comment
- E.K., December 12, 2013 2 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
Dystopia, December 11, 2013by Simon Deimel (Germany) The basic premise is quite fine. There are missing pieces in the story, but that makes the scene more surreal, so it is not necessarily a bad thing. The puzzles are quite difficult, mainly because some elements are not efficiently implemented. These are shortcomings which would have easily been detected during playtesting. (Spoiler - click to show)Examples: I try to TAKE the black cable and there is not enough of it to get a hold of, but it can be PULLED anyway; CLIMBING the hole results in the standard response that there is nothing to be achieved by this, but GOING THROUGH it is fairly okay. So I had to resort to the walkthrough and sometimes my idea had been correct, but the game didn't show me that I was expected to try something very similar. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Remove vote | Add a comment
- SP, August 15, 2010 6 of
6 people found the following review helpful:
Bleak Fragment, February 12, 2008The City by Sam Barlow is a short, bleak game. You start out in a bland room, with only a video recorder, a tape, and a remote control. So what do you do? You watch the tape. On it, you see a person just like you, in a bland room. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Remove vote | Add a comment
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5 people found the following review helpful:
A nice philosophical sci-fi story, December 5, 2007by Juhana I wouldn't call the game "experimental". It has a peculiar thought-provoking story and very cosmetic changes to the standard look and feel of the parser, but that's about it. UNDO, SAVE and RESTORE are disabled for some reason but they are not needed either. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Remove vote | Add a comment
Baf's GuideAn short experimental work, not entirely successful. The main puzzle involves breaking out of a Delusions-esque loop, but this game lacks the backstory of Delusions and doesn't do nearly as much with the conceit. Lots of standard features, such as UNDO and SAVE, are disabled, and there's no status line or location names; the author's reasons for all this hacking aren't clear, but it's fairly disconcerting. It seems like the point was to be nihilistic and gloomy, but the game's too short to have any real emotional impact. -- Duncan Stevens
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