Finding Martin

IF-Review
Not Your Father's Uncle Buddy
I realize there are arguments to be made for underground cave systems and college campuses, but for me the archetypal IF setting will always be Your Crazy Friend/Relative's Crazy House. It's the perfect way to work through all the classic IF tropes � plenty of puzzles to solve for no other reason than to see what's beyond, sealed-off areas you can open, no NPCs, and a plot that emerges in dribs and drabs as the game progresses. Of course, that kind of old-school stuff went out with the dinosaurs (specifically the Nelsonasaurus). These days we're all about the high-concept exploration of character and allegorical narratives detailing the eternal struggle of man vs nature, man vs man, and man vs conversation tree. Right? If so, nobody told Wennstrom � Finding Martin is a fresh-from-the-time-capsule puzzle game of the oldest school and, you know, that's kind of cool. Possibly "cool" is the wrong term for a game that extensively refs Douglas Adams, Monty Python, and Tolkien (not to mention the Beatles, Disney, and Lewis Carroll), but you know what I mean.
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SPAG
If you love yourself a big, juicy puzzlefest, Finding Martin is cause for
celebration. It's several times larger and more complex than anything Infocom
ever attempted, and it's generally quite well-implemented. I encountered a
number of glitches in my journey through the game, but they were all minor --
typos, missing synonyms, and underimplemented parsing mostly. There are a few
logic errors here and there, but nothing game-crashing, and in fact very little
that even caused me any trouble with a puzzle. Moreover, these problem areas are
a very small percentage of the game itself, and this is a game that implements
some highly complex behavior. A few errors here and there are quite forgivable
in a game this ambitious in scope.
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