No Fragments Archive 10: Diskmags/nf_archive_10.iso/MAGS/SYNTAX/SPECIALPD1.MSA/AGT.REV

Text File | 1994-03-07 | 14.1 KB | 301 lines

                        AGT Reviews

@~This issue, James Judge reviews Cliff Diver:Crime to the Ninth
@~Power, Grimwold reviews the PD version of Helvera:Mistress of
@~the Park and James Jillians reviews The Test.
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     Cliff Diver - Crime To The Ninth Power - Pat Farley
                  (for PC, on PD 229)

                Reviewed By James Judge

Cliff Diver is a PI (private investigator) who is getting too
close to a certain corporations dark secrets.  One night, after
opening the file on the case Cliff looked up and saw a man who
introduced something hard to Cliff's head, it hurt.  After the
darkness subsided Cliff found himself in a nondescript corridor
leading to the east and west with a door to the south.

This is how this above average AGT game starts. The narration is
done in the first person so it is as if you are telling Cliff to
do something. When he does it he tells you he has done it (ie >GET
TAPE "OK. I bend over and pick up the tape"). There are also many
personal comments in the text, giving the game more character and
feeling.

After a brief exploration of your surroundings you find you are
stranded on a floor of a tall building.  You've got two options
now, either jump out the window (where you are caught, oh, and
then killed by a thug) or find a way down.

There are only a few items in this level and so it is just a
matter of putting what you've got to use. After about 45 moves the
power in the building goes out. For some reason the game then
resets you to the starting position but this doesn't matter.

All the puzzles are logical (in their own way) from taping
together two electrical wires so the lift can work (make sure you
do it while there is no power in the cables or 'kablooie,
frizzle') to drugging a piranha and using it to fend off a
doberman to allow you to continue on your merry way.

Along with the game came a set of pop-hints which are OK with a
few things being just space fillers and of no real use, but still
the hints are a help.

The game doesn't suffer from the usual bugs, spelling and
grammatical mistakes and other 'downers' and, on the whole, it is
presented very well.

The puzzles are a mixture of easy and hard (God knows how long I
spent looking for a pair of rubber gloves on the ninth level), but
after a bit of careful thought, the answer should be clear (if
not, press alternate-H for the pop-hints).

It's nice to see a serious game but with a sense of humour.  You
are never given something in the game which doesn't have a serious
twist to it (most of them when you die), but instead of the game
being a stiff, dead-serious approach to a detective game (such as
Corruption was, in a way), everything is given a light-hearted
attitude by the way the author has portrayed Cliff, a
happy-go-lucky, sarcastic, stereo-typical (trench coat etc.) type
detective who hates going into the women's toilets.

Another good aspect to this game is that all the standard AGT
system commands (orange and green smoke etc.) have been replaced
with a sensible response - when have you ever seen a doberman
disappear in a puff of orange smoke?

I find very little to moan about this game, the biggest being the
way you're sent back to the start room when the lights go out as
if you had been re-incarnated and the way you get thrown back to
DOS when you die, meaning you have to re-load from scratch (highly
annoying on a floppy system).

A very good game and I look forward to getting the latest in the
series which won the 1992 Softworks AGT Game Of The Year contest.




        REVIEW FOR HELVERA - MISTRESS OF THE PARK
              PD Demo Version By Bob Adams
     Available for PC (552), ST (551) and Amiga (586)
                 Dwarfed by Grimwold

It seemed such an ordinary afternoon, spending a pleasant few
hours in the park. It's a bit of a pity that you got caught by
some particularly unwholesome creatures and dragged before the
park-keeper, Helvera, a particularly nice bit of totty but with a
well-defined dark side to her nature. Seems she wants a hand to
find "seven magic spheres and place them on the Golden Altar".
Well, I wouldn't be much of a gentleman if I refused, now would I?

This second adventure by Mr Adams was originally released on the
Amstrad CPC, which I also had the pleasure of reviewing all those
moons ago. Although the 16-bit versions have been around for a
while, a PC demo of the game has just been released into the
Public Domain. This review will deal with this version, as other
people have reviewed the full version already.

So what's left when the game's been "crippled"? Well, there's
still enough of a game there to get a good feel of what the whole
thing would be like, 50% of the full game.  The demo has around 26
locations, along with all the puzzles assigned to those locations
that you'll find in the 'grown- up' adventure.

Written with some degree of competence, this AGT game does waffle
on a bit in places, especially in the introduction where I think
that possibly the author has got a bit carried away with the extra
memory available. In other places, notably the location
descriptions, the text is decidedly terse, typically restricted to
one line's worth.  Some nice touches shine through which have been
continued from the CPC version, such as using 'X' for examine, and
giving a list of many of the available verbs when "HELP" is
invoked.  These features should, I feel, be utilised by more of
the authors currently active on the computer scene.

However, there are some examples of sloppy programming too,
nothing major, but enough to draw attention to their existence.
For example, when you examine an oven you are told "Just put in
anything that you want to bake." Great! Except you can't put
anything IN it, you have to "cook" it instead! Also, the "ALL"
command hasn't been used; the familiar "Also visible:" appears at
every location, even when there isn't anything there resulting in
an unsightly blank line. And examining the floor in the first
location as described in the location text brings the response:
"What carpet? There is no carpet here."  Who said anything about
carpets? As I have said, none of these is a major problem and can
be ignored with little effort. But having played the seamless and
bug-free CPC version, it seems a pity that the professional finish
I have previously expected from Bob appears to have been muted
slightly in this version, though the quality is still much higher
than many other games of this type.

There is something about Bob's style of writing that never fails
to amuse me, whether it's his adventures or short pieces in
adventure magazines. He never avoids an awful pun, nor side-steps
a shovelfull of slapstick if he thinks it will raise a grin and,
more often than not, it does. The puzzles in his games are a
mixture of the usual and individual, though, none that I can think
of have been irrational, just unique. Perhaps my biggest gripe
with Bob Adams is that he hasn't written a new game for quite a
while, which is, to my mind, a big loss to the adventure
fraternity.

The full version is available from the author at a very reasonable
£3.00 in the UK (£5.00 overseas) on 3.5" disk for ST/PC or Amiga:
Bob Adams, 81 Uplands, Welwyn Garden City, HERTS. AL8 7E8

The PD PC version is available from
Round Corner Shareware:  Hamlyn's Cottage, Old Exeter Road,
Chudleigh, South Devon. TQ13 0DX
On 3.5" disk for £1.50 (disk code ADV034)
(Cheques etc payable to Simon Avery)

   Grimwold's ratings:
                           Graphics        -  N/A
                           Sound           -  N/A
                           Puzzles         -  7/10
                           Atmosphere      -  6/10
                           'Grabability'   -  7/10
                           VFM             -  8/10
                           Overall         -  7/10

A great game, perhaps let down by minor bugs that spoil the
atmosphere.
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       THE TEST - author Ken Bond / programmer Bob Adams
          (AGT adventure for ST, PC and Amiga)

            ST version reviewed by James Jillians

When I first received this game I feared I would not enjoy it. As
anybody who has read any of my other AGT reviews will know, my
AGT-playing history hasn't been a great success! I've been faced
with "classics" such as the terribly unplayable "TimeSquared", the
fatally bugged "Mop and Murder" and the terribly unplayable AND
fatally bugged "Deadly Labyrinth". As you can probably imagine,
this genre of adventures has been something of a "bete noir" for
me... until I played "The Test"...!

You play the part of a restless soldier is tired of the regular
army and wants to find something a little more challenging. Being
a commando in the E.F.F. (the Elite Fighting Force) seemed like
the perfect occupation and you applied as soon as you heard about
it. You quickly discover that entry into this highly skilled
organisation is no proverbial piece of cake - all new recruits
have to undergo "The Test"!

"The Test", as you are instructed in the letter from Central
Command, involves being dropped by parachute into a hostile
environment, with only your wits for company (okay, a pair of
strong boots and a jumpsuit as well!) Your mission is simple - to
escape...  Actually, "simple" wasn't the right word! In order to
have your much longed for job you'll have to venture across
treacherous minefields, through perilous swamps, past electric
fences and armed guards, negotiate mazes, ride on runaway steam
engines...  even face the exploding bulldozer... enough to make
any iron- willed crack commando knock at the knees!

Of course, all this can be experienced by you in the comfort of
your own sitting room - all you have to do is type in the usual
VERB-NOUN inputs (or VERB-NOUN-PREPOSITION-OBJECT OF THE
PREPOSITION inputs in some cases!)

"The Test" is a very large adventure - in fact, there are 250
rooms in all. Of course, many of these rooms are used purely a
scenery and don't play too important a part in the completion of
the game. Surprisingly, you never find yourself wandering bored
through a labyrinth of empty rooms - they are evenly spread out,
to make exploration enjoyable rather than annoying. The large
number of rooms has a large number of puzzles to match!
Unfortunately, many of the items mentioned in room descriptions
can't be examined - it would have been a huge task for the author
to give them all descriptions - so the fussy player might be a
touch aggravated by the frequent "You see nothing unusual"
messages.

The puzzles themselves are varied and challenging. There are, of
course, the standard use-what-object-where conundrums as well as
multi-stage puzzles which involve a combination of several objects
being used at once. There are also logical puzzles that do not
involve objects at all. The puzzles are original, although
occasionally to the extent that they verge on the ridiculous, for
example, picking a padlock with the barrel of a machine gun! I
have to admit that I did have to ask for help on two occasions,
once from the author, Ken Bond and once from my good friend James
Judge.

Most of the problems are logical, but do involve quite a bit of
thought - perfect for the average-ability adventurer who wants a
game that is just easy enough to be fun, yet still taxing enough
to be responsible for a couple of nights of sleep-loss.

Dare I say it - there is a maze - but it's an easily mappable one,
and won't cause too many problems.

The game knows all the reasonable commands, and a few more
besides. A few of the puzzles involve obscure verbs like "GROPE"
(well, I hadn't come across it before!) so I suggest you refer to
the convenient verb list which can be called up by pressing the
"HELP" key.

I was irritated on a few occasions - for instance, I spent half
an hour trying to work out how to open an annoying shed's door. I
tried "OPEN DOOR", "ENTER SHED", "GO EAST", PULL DOOR", "PUSH
DOOR", "FORCE DOOR", "BREAK DOOR" and a few expletives for good
measure, until I realised that the thing was a slide door and you
needed to use the verb "SLIDE"! You often get stuck on a puzzle
like that, and wonder why on earth it took you so long to work out
something so easy when finally you do hit upon the solution!

The game is excellently presented and has been thoroughly play-
tested. I could not find any errors, apart from a disappearing
bull, and that didn't impede my progress through the game to any
great extent.  The spelling is faultless as far as I can see.
Overall, the text is descriptive, atmospheric and well written,
making you feel involved in what you are doing. The text is not
fundamentally humorous, but there are a couple of jokes.

There are no graphics or sound effects. Clear instructions are
given on how to play the game when you load up.

Another thing - the game is not installable into the computer's
memory with a RAM disk. I asked James Judge, SynTax's resident
RAMer, why this was and he explained it to me. I understood very
little, but the practical upshot was that there is no way to
rectify the situation without going through a long and complicated
process which I'm not about to describe. Speed fanatics will be
disappointed especially since there is no "RAMSAVE" facility in
the game either.

ROUND-UP

"The Test" is an adventure well worth buying for the original
puzzles and lastability. The game has been presented very well
indeed, and has none of those frustrating moments when you get
sent to the GEM desktop right at the exciting bit! It is of about
medium to high difficulty and presents the reasonably experienced
adventurer with a fun challenge.

RATINGS

GRAPHICS    :  N/A.               SOUND         :  N/A
EASE OF USE :  8 out of 10        VALUE         : 10 out of 10
DIFFICULTY  :  8 out of 10
HUMOUR      :  1 out of 10    * FUN FACTOR *    :  9 out of 10

Available from Bob Adams, 81 Uplands, Welwyn Garden City, Herts
AL8 7EH - £3.00.

Please state version (ST,Am,PC) required, 3.5" disk only.







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