The Ribos Operation

This game tells a Doctor Who story, and it does it surprisingly well. If playing with a walkthrough at hand, the plot unfolds quickly and interestingly as if it were an actual episode of the eponymous TV show. Much like whatever actions the Doctor might take on the show, however, the puzzles in this game are often inscrutable.

The game could benefit from a more elaborate implementation. Scenery items are usually implemented, but will allow no interaction beyond "The tihamajig is not important." While such descriptions are useful to minimize red herrings, the environment becomes rather lifeless. In this game, the player does what the plot requires, or nothing at all.

Any fixed items along the way that you can interact with are, again, part of the plot and only become active once the plot progress. For example, just about every door is locked and will open automatically once certain events happen, so there is no point searching for a key or whatever other method to open them. I confess that my enthusiasm playing the game abated somewhat when I understood that the plot drives everything, and all the player can do is follow along and solve puzzles as they are presented.

A minor point of irritation: many descriptions lack a full stop at the end (possibly on purpose), but this put me off a little. It smacked of unfinished prose, somehow.

Tying all the plot events together must have been a complicated programming job; the game is therefore ambitious and would have been much better if more effort had gone into descriptions, and puzzle clues.