{While thumbing through some old computer magazines, I came across a
column called "One on One" in the magazine "Computer Games" (published in
the early 80s). This column usually reviewed two games of a similar genre
and gave an objective comparison of the two. The following is from the
July/August 1984 issue of the magazine.}
INFIDEL (Infocom) vs SANDS OF EGYPT (Datasoft)
Reviewed by Michael Blanchet
Typed in by Joe Barlow
How different can two games about a search for lost Egyptian pyramids
be? Very. One is rewarding, the other frustrating. One is engrossing, the
other dehumanizing and rude. In a word, INFIDEL is fun, and SANDS OF EGYPT
isn't.
Despite the fact that INFIDEL is all-text, there's no lack of gra-
phics. By providing text descriptions for your interpretation, Infocom lets
_you_ supply the pictures. Your mind isn't limited by the graphics capabili-
ties of your computer. This leads to a vivid game that's enjoyable whether
you solve it or not.
In the game's opening scene, you're an archeologist who awakes and
finds that disgruntled workers have deserted you in the middle of the
Sahara: "The stillness seems to enhance the eerie quality of the desert,
the feeling of being truly alone...." The prose is descriptive, often funny,
and realistic enough to pass for a pulp novel. The game's parser (which
interprets the commands you type in) is enormous, with a vocabulary of over
600 words compared to SANDS' 100. They include adjectives and other parts of
speech, not just nouns and verbs.
A navigation box helps you get your bearings while searching for the
pyramid. If you wander too far into the desert, you'll witness some hilarious
hallucinations, brought on by heat stroke. Inside the tomb, you'll be con-
fronted with perplexing puzzles that are typical of adventure games. But
INFIDEL offers a new kind of clue: Egyptian hieroglyphics, in the form of
characters like #, ! and others. You have to decipher most of them (a partial
translation left by a previous explorer gets you started) in order to make
real progress in the game. The aforementioned sense of solitude is accent-
uated inside the pyramid, because you're all alone in this game, unlike
others from Infocom. There are no characters like PLANETFALL's Floyd or
ZORK's Thief to interact with.
The packaging bursts with witty and covertly helpful support mater-
ials. You'll get a tongue-in-cheek instruction booklet (cleverly presented
as an adventurer's magazine), various maps, and an unmailed letter whose
contents belie the serious nature of your situation.
In SANDS, you're lost, and I mean lost in every sense of the word:
up the Nile without a paddle. The documentation tells little more than how
to load the game. The section called "Strategy" carries on with the usual
nauseating, contrived preamble about how and why you are here.
The "here" here is also the desert. Animated graphics show sand
swirling across the desert in the top half of the screen, while text below
reads "You are lost in the desert... you are thirsty." Move in any direction
and you're treated to the same bleak picture. Move 30 times in the same
direction and you might stumble across a shovel, but otherwise SANDS doesn't
offer the variety of Infidel's desert.
Growing desperate, I consulted the instruction booklet, this time
under the heading "Hints." Hint #1: "If you see something interesting in the
picture or read something intriguing in the text, you can always GO there."
Yes, _you_ might find something interesting, but the computer won't always
agree with you. I resent it when a computer does the looking and judging for
me. Hint #2 wasn't helpful either, telling me to type "Help." The game
then countered with a cryptic clue: "Danger lurks at every turn." Thanks for
reminding me.
Compared to INFIDEL, SANDS is obnoxious. The command cursor, for
example, is followed by "WELL?" It's as if an unspoken voice is prodding you
to "Get a move on, dummy!" According to the plot, you're no dummy, but Lord
Charles Buckingham III. A character of such lofty credentials would have
been more at home in INFIDEL. Here he's a bumbling idiot.
SANDS is not without merit. The animated graphics outclass those
generated by most adventures of this type. But even animated graphics don't
compare to INFIDEL's prose, and the better choice is obvious in this case.
{As a footnote, in the same issue, another ONE ON ONE compared AZTEC
and the original CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN, giving them both rave reviews.}
In the same issue, listed under the TOP TEN SOFTWARE SELLERS for
that month, Zork I was rated at #2 and Deadline was at #10. The same issue
also contained the 1984 SOFTWARE HALL OF FAME. Some items of interest from
that section: Planetfall was voted Honorable Mention for Game of the Year,
and PFall also won the Outstanding All-Text Adventure category (Enchanter
and Suspended both received honorable mention in that category.) Penguin's
The Quest was voted best graphic adventure. And just for the record, Pitfall
II: Lost Caverns was voted Best Action game.
