~The Adventurers Journal By Martin Keen Its been an unfortunately quiet month on the adventure game front but there's still lots happening in this months Adventurers Journal. Step this way for another look at the world of graphic adventures. ~The Ultimate Adventurers Companion Even the best of us get stuck occasionally in the often illogical world of adventure game puzzles. How on earth were you supposed to know to use the dog as a pair of slippers? Let these moments of programmer's madness worry you no more with a new publication from the makers of Cheet Sheets Monthly. The Cheet Sheets Adventure Special has solutions for just about every adventure game released on the PC. Its the perfect way to get you off that puzzle thats been bothering you for days and on with the rest of the game. But the Adventure Special is much more than that. Its packed with reviews of graphic adventures too so you can pick and choose the games you want to buy and know your getting opinions from a totally unbiased quarter - gamesplayers themselves. Add to that a number of cheats for those who prefer to hack their way through adventures, and a collections of interesting and informative articles all about the genre of the graphic adventure. You'll even find a compilation of all previous Adventurers Journals. The Cheet Sheets Adventure Special is available from just about all the same places as you'll find this magazine. Dial up the Cheet Sheets BBS, or contact Wayne Roberts by phone or post to get hold of it. The Adventure Special is not only a vital resource but also a good read. ~Forthcoming Games There's loads of games to look forward to being released in the months ahead. Heres a look at two of the most promising: ~THE 11th HOUR - Trilobyte - Due Out: October This is just about classified as a graphic adventure. It includes lots of pointing and clicking and solving puzzles so it'll do for us. Its now been given a October 1995 release date but this game was due out over a year ago when Trilobyte took out a huge advertising scheme. What they have been doing since then isn't exactly clear but the 11th Hour is looking as impressive as ever. Its basically an extension of The 7th Guest but with forty puzzles, thirteen special quests, four secret passages, and a number of treasure hunts. Eighteen actors were filmed in Oregon in sequences that when added together make up as much live action as a movie. Maybe we'll be able to see for ourselves if all this mixes together into a decent game by the end of the month but don't bet on it. ~TOONSTRUCK - Virgin Studios USA - Due Out: February Never has a game looked so gorgeous. The specs are impressive; all the graphics have been drawn in SVGA and they include numerous background animations on all the 100 locations the game includes. The main character animation sprite (which is voiced by Christopher Lloyd - the doc from Back To The Future) has more than 50 animations cycles which then have special morphing techniques applied to them between frames to create a smooth image. Thats all very well but games with specs like that usually mean the designers have been so busy worrying how the game looks they forget to add a bit of gameplay. That doesn't sound the case here, the engine is going to be a typical point 'n click interface similar to Sam & Max and be interwoven with around 70 puzzles. Virgin USA aren't trying to create a new genre, just improve on what LucasArts has done so far. You'd be mad not to keep a very close eye on this one. ~Star Wars The Adventure? We here at the Adventurers Journal have been trying to guess what the next LucasArts graphic adventure will be after The Dig. I've been playing a lot of LECs Doom beater Dark Forces this month for my review and it struck me that its about time Star Wars made it out of the arcades and shoot-em-ups and into a graphic adventure. It could be made to tie in with the new Star Wars triology Clone Wars and would sell copies just by its name alone. And if LucasArts don't want to do that then how about Monkey Island 3? They can't possibly leave the series where it is at the moment after the amazing end sequence! ~Simon The Sequeller While on the subject of end game sequences, what about Simon The Sorcerer 2? Without giving away what actually happens you're going to be very unsatisfied by the ending of this. The storyline continues to unfold and just as you're expecting yet another huge chuck of gameplay to open up the credits role, and the game says "To Be Continued...". Its all very well leaving a story on a cliffhanger until the next episode but if that episode is another two years off (as was the difference between Simon 1 and 2) the player soon loses patience and interest. Adventuresoft better be damn quick in following this one up. ~"Captain - Gameplay left from shuttle bay 9" Star Trek : The Next Generation continues to sell well in the shops but after some extensive playtesting we're beginning to wander if its really a game at all. At first the Star Trek atmosphere smothers the player with charm while the graphics delight. Its all seems very non-linear too with a seemingly huge range of missions to choose from. But a few hours later we began to wander when we got to have a go. After a while the game decides you must be bored with all this tedious interaction so it does it all for you. Gaps of 10 minutes without so much as pressing a mouse button are common the further in you get. And as for the non-linearity, thats just a trick. If you don't choose the option the game wants you'll eventually be forced to do it anyway. If you decide to go to Horst IV but the game wants you to go to Hydoselic III you'll be interupted midflight with a message from Star Fleet telling you to head back. Spectrum Holobyte are going to have to learn to add a bit more interaction into their next one if they want to equal the high sales they got this time. But unfortuantely any game with a Star Trek licence is going to sell a certain number of games no matter how bad it is. And thats further proof (if proof were needed) that Trekkies are indeed a very sad bunch! There'll be more again next month, but in the meantime contact me on the Cheet Sheets BBS on anything adventure related. Its real easy to do; just mail a message to Martin Keen.