~THE ADVENTURERS JOURNAL

~By Martin Keen


Welcome to the home of the adventure game. This is the column to read
for those brave warriors who take on the might of the toughest graphic
adventures, and succeed. These are the people whose hard drives are 
filled with more saved game positions than actual software. And these
are the people who have the strange habit to point and click and shout  
"Of course - why didn't I think of that before!". For this is where 
all the news and views concerning the latest in interactive 
storytelling can be found. Don't be without it.

~Full Throttle

If you've ever played a graphic adventure before and even mildly 
enjoyed the experience then make sure you go out and buy LucusArts
latest and quite possibly greatest game of all. For the first time
since Indy Jones you get to control a cool lead character as opposed
to the weirdos and nerds that have gone before (Guybrush Threepwood,
Bernard, and Sam are fine examples). Ben Throttle tears up the road 
like a bat out of hell on a bike the size of a mini-bus. And if you're
nice to him he might let you play with his interactive tatto.

I've already devoted an entire article to this game so I'll keep this 
section fairly short. All I will say is if you want to find out more
about it get hold of the May issue of PC Gamer because it devotes
11 pages to Full Throttle including a behind the scenes chat with
the LucasArt gods themselves. Then get down to a software retailer
near you on Friday 12th May to get hold of your very own copy.


~Bugs Swarm To Discworld

But that`s quite enough hyperactive excitement over one game. You see
when I get started talking about LucasArts I just go on and on and....

Whenever a software house has their first go at producing a graphic
adventure it isn't normally up to much, although subsequent games
tend to get better because of the gained experience. As far as I know
Teeny Weeny games haven't produced ANY games before so the odds of
Discworld being up to much weren't good. But they certainly took their
time over the project and have produced a funny and interesting game.

No doubt much of the credit must go to Terry Pratchett who has
overseen the translation of his excellent series of books successfully 
to the computer. There have been several reports of Pratchett 
supervising all aspects of the story and being very selective of the
material that went into the game. But am I the only one left wondering
whether he got round to actually playing the finished version?
Surely he wouldn't have let it be sold with so many bugs intact. With
worrying regularity lines of text are spoken, and then repeated 
immediately up to two or three times. Then on other occasions the
speech disappears altogether to be mysteriously replaced with on
screen text.

Can you imagine one of Terry Pratchetts novels being sold with some 
pages repeated, and others missing altogether? Seeing as the game
retails for 10 times the price of the books then it seems strange that
quality assurance and decent testing haven't been implemented. It's
particually fortunate then that Discworld is such a bloody good game.


~They keep on comin'

Everyone is trying to get in on the act it would seem. Gone are the 
days when only Sierra and LucasArts wrote graphic adventures. The 
number of point and click adventures both on the market now, and
the others on their way seems to have risen steeply over the last
year or two. With the newbies Discworld, Flight Of The Amazon Queen,
and Full Throttle (have I mentioned this game yet?) and the 
upcoming Orion Conspiracy and Simon 2 there has never been a better
time to be into adventures.

But one mystery remains. Whatever happened to Ron Gilbert, creator
of the hugely successful Monkey Island games? He left LucasArts to
work on a few kids games for Humungous Software but later promised
his next project would be an adult game. Has anyone heard anything
about what this might be? If LucasArts aren't going to do Monkey 3
then maybe Ron will. After all it hardly seems fair to let the series
stop after watching the intreging end game sequence.



Next month I will have the ultimate round-up of all the forthcoming
adventures due for release this year. Be sure not to miss it. But
until then keep gaming, and let me know your opinions over the e-mail.


Mail me over the internet at: t_030f3_mk@southampton-institute.ac.uk


~Martin can also be contacted on the Cheet Sheets BBS, just leave a
~message to Martin Keen.