Gateway

I've been writing reviews for games I've completed on Steam for a long time in order to remember my own impressions of the game (username archcorenth), but when I complete a game off of Steam I do nothing and it feels like I've left something undone. So, this is my first review of a Steam game so I can feel the experience is complete.

Gateway is my fourth Legend Entertainment game, following Death Gate (which I thought was fine but way overrated), Spellcasting 101, and Eric the Unready (which I think is probably the first text adventure I ever completed). The overriding design factor in Gateway seems to me to be accessibility. This entire adventure CAN be played only with the mouse (although I think that would be extremely tedious), and mapping is only required for one area in the game, and even that area isn't too complicated.

Mapping isn't required because all the areas in the game are quite small, I think this should be the usual for text adventures. After all the areas around you are described in text and stored in your memory, you don't really need to know the exact cardinal layout of everything, unless that is part of the puzzle. I think a lot of early text adventures wanted to create a place with text, but later ones are more interested in telling a story. This is of the latter category and I approve of that because text adventures one big advantage over graphical games which is that have no restrictions when it comes to story.

Gateway does part particularly well with the story in Part One. In part one, you arrive on a space station as a prospector who will fly to dangerous planets and scavenge them for technologies you can bring back to the space station for cash.
Gateway lets you explore the space station as you like and investigate things you find interesting. It gives you ideas of what to do and where and when to meet people who might give you advice. You start to build up the story in your mind this way. This is something computer games can do and novels can't, but computer games hardly ever do it! Most computer games railroad you down predetermined paths beat by beat like they are movies. It's really annoying to me particularly in RPG's where I think, all this game does is for me to fight 50 skeletons in order to read the next chapter of the book.

Unfortunately, this freedom ends once you enter PART TWO, at that point you are given a new objective (save mankind from a nebulous threat) and are told to do this and this in order to complete it. That takes to the end of the game. There are still maybe a few side things to do in space station but it's mostly because you didn't get them done in part one before triggering part two. It's disappointing. What is well-done about this section is that each planet you go feels very different from the others. I suspect that maybe Legend had each of their designers design their own planet and populate it with their own puzzles to accomplish this. This part is still fun. It like just a bunch of mini stand alone text adventures. But it's not particularly special.

That takes you up to the end of the game. I was getting a bit tired here and I cheated at two of the puzzles because I wanted to go to bed and I wouldn't get back to the game for a long time because I'm going to work tomorrow. I wish I wouldn't have for one but another one I think was unfair. It's the very last puzzle in the game and if there are any clues for it, I never saw them. There is one other place I cheated and this part I think was very poorly designed. It involves your handler you meet in the bar. (Spoiler - click to show)The handler gives you advice and then waggles his eyebrows at you suggesting he wants you to buy him a drink. You but him a drink and he suggests introducing you to someone. so far so good. but you're suppose to buy him a second drink after that to get him to introduce you to someone else! No hints and if you leave and see him again, you get THE EXACT SAME DIALOGUE you got the first time. and when you buy him a drink then, he introduces you to the first person again, whom you've already met. Why on earth should you think there is anything more to do? Personally, I think you should read that if you think you might play the game.

So, yeah, I really recommend it. It's maybe not everything it could be but it's fun and has a great opening with just a ton of detail and things to do that make the space station seem like a real place. (In fact, my favorite part of the whole game was Old Earth Trivia in the casino which gave you trivia question about things that hadn't happened yet, but that you could figure out with the trivia knowledge you already have.)