Microforum is not exactly one of the major players in the computer game arena. Maybe the reason is that they are capable of creating games as pitifully bad as their latest creation, Maabus. They also seem to be genuinely confused about commonplace distinctions in the industry. The box for Maabus bills it, on four different faces, as 1) The Ultimate PC Adventure, 2) The Ultimate PC Videogame, 3) The Ultimate Adventure and 4) The Ultimate Videogame. Anyone who pays even the slightest attention to these sorts of things knows that these are four completely different categories. Anyone who actually sits down and plays the darn thing will very quickly know that not one of the statements is even remotely true.
The only things that seem to have filtered through to this Toronto production office about the world of computer games are that good graphics sell, and that people will pay significantly more money for a product with more than one CD-ROM. Hence, Maabus has very nicely rendered trees and buildings and takes up 3 CD's. It even has some good, sharp digital video with a live actor. It just doesn't have a game.
The plot is not bad. It might conceivably have been made into a good game in a parallel universe. The government is concerned about a strange form of radiation which is suddenly emanating from a small South Pacific island called Aloratora. Studies have indicated that the glow is growing, and, if not halted, will surely swallow the planet, meaning doom for all. (That actually sounds like a pretty good campaign platform for a politician trying to win the hearts of gamers everywhere. DOOM for all! But I digress.)
There have already been two teams sent to find and destroy the source of the radiation, but they both diappeared, leaving only the radioed information that there is mutant animal life around on the island.
So the Department of Defense has sent for you. You will not actually be personally going to Aloratora, but will be controlling a remote-control tank called the Krawler 1000. It's got a laser, a rocket launcher, toxic gas and a grappling arm. What more could you ask for when exploring a mysterious island? You have between one and two hours (depending on difficulty setting) to locate the offending thingy and wipe it out, thus saving the world from a green, glowing fate.
Now the mere fact that winning the entire 3 CD game should take two hours, tops, should alert you that something is wrong here.
The entire game is played out in a window that takes up about a fifth or sixth of the screen, in the upper center. The rest of screen is filled with your "control panel," and an odd thing it is. Starting in the upper left, you have the gauges that tell you how much ammo you have left in each of your weapons. At the start of the game, you have four missles, three lasers and three doses of gas, meaning ten "zaps" of different kinds, and there is no way to recharge during the game. How can you possibly explore an entire island, known to be crawling with mutant wildlife, with only ten "bullets?" More on this later.
Moving counter-clockwise, we come to the Analysis control, which lets you examine anything on the screen. Just push the button, and crosshairs will appear on your video display. Click on the item I question, and a readout will move across the bottom center of the screen. This is almost never useful information. It seems that everything is either "normal jungle flora" or an "unknown substance."
In the approximate center of the screen are four buttons that almost overlap each other. Despite their central position, none of these are particularly important or frequently used buttons. But it is interesting to note that one of them is the "manual," or on-line hints, and the one directly counter to it is the self-destruct button. It's actually not very easy to accidentally blow yourself up, since you have ten seconds to "reconsider," but it's just one of the amusing design oddities about this system.
Continuing our tour we come to the map. As you move around on the island, red squares appear on the terrain you have passed. The measure is not one square per move, it's either two or three, depending on the situation. There's also no indication on the map of which way you are facing. This becomes very important, because your movement choices are forward, left, right and turnaround. No cardinal directions. No compass. Just do your best to figure out where the hell you're going. And remember, this is a military sponsored mission!
Finally, we come to the sensors, and one of my favorite features of the interface. Four gauges bounce around like they are connected to the latest release by Erasure, and they don't really tell you a damn thing. The top bar measures radiation, which is irrelevant, because the tank is not affected by it. The second one supposedly senses the presence of lifeforms, except that it hangs down in the lower third of its range constantly, until you are attacked, at which point it surges into the red. Real helpful. Then there's the magnetic field gauge, which actually seems to tell you whether you're about to fall off the edge of the island. Weird. And finally, the "unidentified" gauge. I wish I had one of those in my Toyota.
As for gameplay, well, you cover the island from stem to stern trying to find any information you can about the island. Occasionally you will run into a monster of some kind. My advice is to shoot it. The interesting thing about what passes for combat in this game is that you are not able to fire your weapon except when a creature is headed straight for you. Firing at other times is not even an option. So, beastie runs at you, and you fire at it. If you click your mouse on the right place at the right time, the action freezes for a few seconds, and the computer loads an appropriate death scene from the CD. If you hit it with the laser, you dismember it. If you hit it with the missles you blow it to bits. If you hit it with the gas, it passes out. You might think this would be a good time to use your analyzer. No such luck. the corpses always vanish!
Oh, by the way, if you happen to miss or try to fire with an empty or jammed weapon, the action freezes for a few seconds while the computer loads the appropriate scene, then the creature knocks out reception in your tank. You are then treated to a shot of the entire island going up in a mushroom cloud, followed by your commanding officer laying an incredible guilt trip on you. (My personal favorite is: "The robot has been destroyed. The island has also been destroyed. Soon the entire world as we know it will be destroyed. If you'll excuse me, I have to go be with my family." All this said with the same tone you received your mission briefing in.) Then the whole damn world blows up and boils away into space. All because you couldn't click your mouse right, damn you.
With the fate of the universe riding on your shoulders, it's obviously pretty important to save your game a lot as you roam Aloratora. Microforum seems to think so, too. When they were trying to figure out how to keep you from winning the game the absolute first time you played it, (thereby keeping you from ever wanting to play this loser again,) they came up with a brilliant idea. They decided to disable the save function when you get to the crucial third CD and tell you it makes the game more fun. WHEEEEE!
The very few puzzles, like everything else in Maabus, are all or nothing functions. One such "puzzle" requires the player to push the right hieroglyphic with the robotic arm. There are six choices. There are also no indications anywhere as to which is the right choice. You guess. If you guess wrong, you die, and the world blows up, then you try again.
It's hard to fathom that a game could be as painfully bad as Maabus, until you remember a few other multi CD turkeys like Creature Shock and Flash Traffic. As we did with those pathetic products, IE strongly advises its viewers to ignore the pretty box art and stay as far away as possible from this ugly beast.
