Reviews
*******
By Quentin.D.Thompson,
Infamous Author Of Interactive Fiction,
Using the Adventure Game Toolkit
To Conceal his Congenital Inability to
Write A Decent Parser by Himself.
Author of the stirring tale of medical malpraxis,
"A Bloody Life".
:-)
(The opinions below are purely my own, and are inclined to be - as Mike
Marqusee said about Rowland Bowen's cricket books - cranky, obsessive,
and pedantic in turn. This said and done, they are meant mostly for fun,
and as a guide to some of the text games I have been lucky or unlucky
enough to take a bash at.)
Disclaimers:
===========
1. I am fully aware that, to some people, my games may be as irritating,
annoying or bad as some of those I latched on to in this file. Well,
opinions differ. So, don't be too bugged if I've taken a crack at
your fave game, or praised your personal bugbear.
2. Not being a 'classical' adventure player, I tend to prefer detective
adventures, etc..over the classic twisty-little-maze games. This, again
is not to belittle the latter, but merely my own warped taste.
Rating Systems:
==============
My rating system is rather funny. Each game gets a primary rating which
can be one of the following:
BOMB - A total washout. Worth playing only to make fun of.
WUSS - A weak game. Might appeal to certain people, but not me.
** - An average game
*** - A good game
**** - Wow, I really enjoyed this!
X - Tough, and not much fun.
X**X - Good game, but damned tough/tricky to crack.
Besides which, gameplay, conversation and descriptions all get ratings out
of 10. (I'm rather big on conversation, as some of you who've played my
games - A Bloody Life and Time Traveller - might know.) When a game does
not feature conversation, the rating is CX, not C0.
There are separate 'Grouse', 'Nitpick' and 'Notable' headings for
further details.
A separate heading - QDT4 - deals with what I call the Quentin.D.Thompson
4-Letter Word trap. In other words, how does the game respond to four-letter
words? The best response, so far, was from Graham Nelson's "Curses".
And now, on to the fun......
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1. DUCK SOUP (AGT) (*** G8 C5 D8)
Genre : Detective/Humorous
This very funny AGT adventure has you as a two-bit private eye attempting
to recover a glamorous client's rubber ducky.
Notable : This game has an irreverent sense of humour that really
tore me up (what other games have you scooping doggie-doo,
or hunting in refuse cans, or razzing guys by using their
nicknames?) The ending - a great, big anti-climax - also
deserves mention.
Grouses : Some guess-the-verb situations (STAY AT LINE 2, CHEER AT
POPCORN DUCK, POUR GLOB ON POPCORN), some way-out
puzzles (calling a guy Lollypop instead of Poplolly is
one example), and conversation is rather low.
Nitpick : Full use wasn't made of some of AGT's features. For example:
What Now? GIVE DUCK TO KID
The charming KID refuses your offer.
(Using $noun$, KID could easily have been made lowercase.)
QDT4 : Not available - "I don't recognize <word> as a verb."
Final Verdict : Recommended for almost all text-adventure buffs.
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2. GUMSHOE, An Interactive Investigation (Inform) (**** G8/9 C7 D8)
Genre : Detective
A pure detective adventure, sort of similar to the much bigger "The
Hollywood Murders", but with your old Aunt Marge as secretary. Snoop
on the oh-so-macho John McBride and find out whether or not he's
cheating on his wife.
Notable : A good game, nice puzzles, nice dialogue, and some cute
realism. For example, when John's wife comes to you
about the case at first, you can't get started unless
you 1. offer her a seat and 2. give her your handkerchief.
Nice situations, too, sometimes. Some joke commands
(try swearing or praying in front of Marge) do work.
There is an AMUSING command, like in The Wedding, when
you finish the game.
Grouses : I found the time-frame jarring. And the tires on Boggs'
car - vital to stalling him - aren't mentioned in the
object description. (This explains why I needed to
cheat with "infocom -r gumshoe.z5" before I finished
it.) And having to repeat giving $100 five times is
a little annoying.
Nitpick : One of your twenty points is not connected to the
investigation (scoring a bullseye on the dartboard.)
And, in my opinion, "KISS SANDRA" deserved a funnier
reply than that available in the standard Inform
library.
QTD4 : Standard ("Real adventurers do not use such language.")
Final Verdict : Get this one!
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3. MERCY (Inform) (WUSS G0 C6 D0)
Genre : Just plain irritating.
Dreary, boring, pessimistic stuff. An epidemic of smallpox has broken
out, and your sole object is to make out with a nurse at your hospital
before you die (I think.) Its author plans to write another game about
right-wing politics and euthanasia. God, spare us.
Notable : It's very easy to finish.
Grouses : too numerous to mention. Weak characters, silly dialogue
(though there's a lot of it), poor gameplay (there's very
little freedom to do what you want), and annoying multiple
endings. Did I mention "boring" or "overblown"? Perhaps
I'm being too harsh - this is meant to be an 'interactive
short story', not a TA per se.
Nitpicks : This game has no little faults, only big ones.
QTD4 : Standard ("Real adventurers...")
Final Verdict : If you enjoyed my game "A Bloody Life", you can thank
this game in part, for compelling me to write a decent
hospital game.
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4. THE WEDDING (Inform) (**** G9 C7 D9)
Genre : Humorous
This amusing and interesting game by Neil James Brown puts you in the role
of an ordinary Joe trying to discover why his best friend's gone missing
at his own wedding. Game solutions include a seedy watchman, a grumpy
cook, a VCR, a water detector, and a snobbish mum-in-law. Can one ask for
more?
Notable : Good conversation, online hints, and some objects (like
the TV) are there partly for fun. Ever tried ordering
Peruvian folk songs by phone? And the puzzles (such as
dealing with sulky old Uncle William) are amusing.
Grouses : None in particular, except that the VCR puzzle was a little
hard to crack.
Nitpicks : None that I can think of right now.
QTD4 : Standard ("Real adventurers....")
Final Verdict : Definitely worth adding to any TA collection.
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5. MOP AND MURDER (AGT) (**** G9 CX D9)
Genre : Detective
This was Brad Friedman's very first game, and a damned good one too.
As Peter Green, janitor in a CIA office, you stumble upon the assasination
of a secret agent, Andrew Shannon, and have to clear it up. All your
clues are in one room.
Notable : The telephone, the safe, the books, and the pophints! The
AGT parser was definitely taken to the limit here, with very
good results, and some new commands, such as UNDER for looking
under objects. Many objects are 'hidden' in descriptions, as
in Inform games. (I still haven't yet figured out how he did
that; my games still look like this:
You are in a prison cell.
There is a wooden stool here. (in the cell.)
There is a saw here. (in the cell.)
Corny, ain't it?)
Lots of puzzles and codes to crack, and some good
investigation.
Grouses : None in particular, but there's no conversation.
Nitpicks : I wasn't able to READ Officer Harvey's badge (essential
to understanding the crime) and had to hack the code to
do so. If you don't want to spoil your fun, I'll just
tell you that his full name is James Joyce Harvey, and
his security code is green.
QTD4 : A metacommand message (Well, you could <verb> the <object>, but it won't
help you solving this case.)
Final Verdict : An adventure without exploration? Without mazes?
Yes, it can be done, and very well indeed.
By the way, this was the game that introduced me
to pop-up hints.
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6. NEW ENGLAND GOTHIC (AGT) (** G6 C1 D4)
Promising start, interesting middle, and a finish that shoots the whole
game in the foot. That's the sad story of Simba's "New England Gothic",
in which you inherit your Great-Aunt Eliza's mansion, and start finding
out things about it. There's nothing particularly gothic about it,
though a ghost does materialize every now and then. And, as interesting
as some of the puzzles were (I never got the full score of 265 points),
some of the characters (the Portuguese woman, for example) did nothing,
John Ryder is strangely conversationless, and anyway what do you say
about a game whose winning command is KISS JOHN? If I hadn't had the
bad luck to play MUSE (see the next entry), this game would be
rated WUSS instead of **.
Notable : The atmosphere is pretty good at times. Animal lovers might
enjoy the cat and the horse, and you can interact quite a bit
with all of the objects - unlike some AGT games. There is
a sort of mystery to be solved, but it's lamer than "Oliver
Twist", so forget it.
Grouses : Several. For one, you can't enter the church or the underground
unless big, manly John is with you. How sexist! Worse, how
unadventursome! Several locations kill you without warning
(such as the sea, the terrace and the staircase). There are
too many loose ends. And the whole story is unconvincing.
Nitpicks : Conversation - so essential if you're trying to tell a
story - is at a minimum.
QTD4 : Not available.
Final Verdict : Lovers of Mills and Boon, or Harlequin Romances, might
like the ending; TA buffs may enjoy some of the problem
solving, but will be turned off by the ending.
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7. MUSE, An Autumn Romance (Inform) (BOMB G2 C7 D3)
Romantic novels, traditionally, earn their popularity because you can
be a passive observer - and, if you're the slushy type - get your
kicks out of what's happening in the novel. It's the same factor that
drove thousands of middle-aged women to watch "Titanic" over and over
again........the kick of seeing a hunky, twenty-something male and a
beautiful, twenty-something female living (un)happily ever after. That's
why, I always thought, romantic novels couldn't be made into TAs unless
you were the hero or the heroine - could they?
Wrong.
In this putrid, irritating, slushy, sentimental, preachy and weakly
written game, Christopher Huang shows us the way. Since I hate
suspense, I'll give you the story. Sixty-something pastor from
England falls in love at first sight with thirty-something German
girl, in France of all places. I'll continue in the next headings.
Notable : Like "Mercy", I guess I may be going a bit too hard on this
game, which is clearly not a true TA but a sort of experiment.
And there is quite a lot of conversation, and a few novel
commands (SUPPORT, INTRODUCE <person> TO <person>, etc.)
Grouses : Shall I count the ways?
1. Cliched, sickening plot. Women falling for struggling
artists is so deja vu that you can't stifle a
"yeah, right" when Mister John Austin appears on scene.
2. Cliched, sickening characters. The choleric and
uncommunicative Viktor van Goethe, his colourless
daughter, and your own unappealing persona as a
reticent Englishman are, I'm sure, taken from
second-hand copies of a Silhouette Desire or
Danielle Steele novel. Yaagh.
3. Irritating puzzles. I'll give you a walkthrough:
Check in to the hotel. Save Viktor. Go make small
talk with his daughter. Encourage John. Make the
bugger paint her. Talk to old Vik again. Leave
the island. Live dreamily ever after.
Or, even shorter: Forget your mid-life crisis.
Act as go-between between Konstanza and John.
Go home.
4. When you finish the game, you don't get that old,
familiar, comforting message that goes
*** Congratulations. You have won the game. ***
Instead, you get crap like
*** I was reconciled to myself and my station in life. ***
And, after all is said and done, you get a hymn
by St. Francis of Assisi printed on-screen. I have
nothing against St. Francis, but using his hymn in
that situation pissed me off so much that I had to
play all my old favourites about 3 times before
recovering.
Nitpicks : 1. When you're writing a game with a lot of conversation,
give your characters short names! You don't know
how bugging it is to key in "Konstanza" every damn
time you want to say something. (I did something like
this in my first game, when I had a character called
Henrietta. Since then, I've always given them
short names: Edwin, Alice, Ivan, Jeb, etc.....Yes,
I DID include Marie-Antoinette in Time Traveller, but
you can simply refer to her as Marie, or the Queen,
and besides you don't have to talk to her!)
2. There is a big bug in the TALK code! When Viktor
is hanging from the ceiling and about to die,
try this command:
>talk to victor
We chatted for a while, but soon digressed.
As if a dying man could carry on a conversation.
3. Try asking for a score:
>score
"Doth God exact day-labour,
light denied?"
- John Milton, "On His Blindness."
I mean, that is so damn annoying.
QTD4 : Original ("What would the Bishop say!" or "What would the parish think?")
Final Verdict : This is surely one of the worst games of all times. It
won two IF awards, but so what? After all, "Titanic"
won 12 Oscars. "The God Of Small Things" won a Booker
prize. Indian people keep on winning Miss World
contests.
If you ask me, all awards are scams.
On the other hand, it's great to parody.
Guess who's going to write a game called
"AMUSE : A Summer Romance"?
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8. THE HOLLYWOOD MURDERS (No platform) (*** G9 C6 D7)
Nice little text-adventure where you play a struggling private eye
who gets the chance of his life when a glamorous woman called Thea
Harbou glides into his office. (Corny start, isn't it?). Very much
in the style of "Gumshoe". There are two versions of this game, both
available at ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/pc : one with PCX graphics
(Hollydemo.zip) and a text-only version (Hollytext.zip)
Notable : Good descriptions and characters. Some very nice puzzles
(for example, wearing the suit and fake moustache to
trick Peterson's secretary, or drugging the dog, or
tripping Sam Cranston by pulling his bum leg.) and a
rather coherent storyline. Not much conversation, but
ASK x ABOUT y does often work. One good joke in the
secretary's office (where there is a bust of Louis
Mayer):
>examine bust
You look down at the secretary and admire her bosom.
(Sorry, if you meant the picture of Louis.B.Mayer.)
Ha, ha, ha.
Grouses : There aren't too many places to explore, and most
of your moving around is DRIVE TO <place>. But then,
you can't have everything.
Nitpicks : Just a few little things that seem to have slipped my
mind right now.
QDT4 : Not available.
Final Verdict : Who needs graphics? This is a fine - if rather
easy - text game. Enjoy it.
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9. PICK UP THE PHONE BOOTH AND DIE (Inform) (BOMB G0 C0 D0)
You are stuck in front of a phone booth. If you pick it up, you die.
What's a guy to do?
So small and irritating that it's funny. And it's definitely better
than MUSE, even though it has no gameplay, descriptions or conversation
worth noting.
Notable : It's short, and (if you like cheap humour) sweet.
Nitpicks : Too small to find any, really.
Grouses : Is a one-puzzle game really worth playing?
QDT4 : Cute ("Not on your birthday", "I'm not interested in your diet").
Final Verdict : Mildly amusing, but in the end, simply not worth it.
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10. Mystery Science Theater presents DETECTIVE (AGT) (*** G3 C9 D8)
This is the first of the Mystery Science Theater parodies, which ruthlessly
takes apart Matt Barringer's rookie game, "Detective".
Notable : The heckling after each move. I don't know how he does it, but
Tom, Crow and the rest make this game a lot of fun.
Grouses : Gameplay is lame, but - hey - that's how the original was. The
descriptions are so bad they're funny.
Nitpicks : The parser is a little weak, but since this game has no
puzzles, that doesn't really matter
QDT4 : N/A
Final Verdict : If you liked my games, or the PORK saga, you'll scream your
head off with this one.
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11. MST presents "The Incredible Erotic Adventures Of Stiffy Makane!" (Inform)
(*** G0 C10 D0)
If you're one of the many IF players who feel like murdering Mark Ryan
for his disgusting blot on the history of Text Adventures, this very ribald
parody game is the one for you. From Crow's new invention, the Suck-O-Matic,
to Gypsy's new game, "Richard Baseheart Adventure 69", to the final
confrontation with Frankie that is sheer Standard AGT pastiche, this is
a funny, irreverent and risque game that is definitely worth playing if
you're badly in need of belly-laughs.
Notable : Well, check this out:
Frankie, Pamela's husband, is here.
> examine frankie
He's Pam's husband. Lucky guy, isn't he?
The frankie seems to be getting angrier!
> kill frankie
What frankie? I see no frankie here.
Even the TITLE is funny: IEASM, version release 69069,
coded by the Drunken Bastard and the Dastardly Coward.
Grouses : Not everyone might enjoy the actual gameplay, which REALLY
is cheap. To get the full impact of the game, you can
try downloading the walkthrough of the original IEAOSM to
help you out. (I'll give you an example of how foul Mark
Ryan's original game was : 69 is a legal verb.)
Nitpicks : Unless you've scored the full hundred points, you can't
see the (very funny) ending.
QDT4 : Well, in this game, 4-letter words are legal verbs(!), so the
test can't apply.
Final Verdict : Good (but not very clean) fun.
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