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Cheet Sheets 1995 June
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1995-09-26
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~Discworld
Review By Martin Keen
Last month Lu Richardson wrote a review about Discworld. Most of what
she said was spot on as always. Yes, the humour is indeed very sharp
and VERY funny. And the cartoon animation is a joy to watch. But she
went one step further than that. she enthused:
"This is not a game... it is, instead, pure entertainment"
"A very exceptional work of computer art"
Having just this moment completed the game I simply can't agree with
these comments. Discworld does have plus points in abundance; read
Lu's review last issue if you want to find out more. But this article
has the aim of showing you the other side of the coin - why Discworld
could turn out to be a very big disapointment to a great many people.
The most publisied problem has been its numerous bugs. My version came
with a patch disk so I was expecting the programming errors to have
been corrected. But they still exsist. Almost every time you play the
game you are likely to be confronted by the mysterious missing speech
syndrome but instead of the digitised voice-over text is displayed on
screen. Then, other lines of dialogue get repeated twice in a row for
no apparent reason. And other times still Rincewind or one of the
other characters disappear from the screen completely only to
magically reappear seconds later. Now I realise the lead character is
a wizard, but I think this is taking things a bit too far!
These bugs may seem like a minor problem, and really they are, but
they happen so often it begins to get annoying. When you pay 40 quid
for a game you are surely within your rights in expecting it to work.
But that's just the beginning. TWG reckon it would take the average
game player about 100 hours to complete. Thats probably an
understatement - the game is absolutely huge. There's no doubt that
this has to go down as a positive point, but the reason the game takes
so long to complete is because it is almost impossibly hard. Without
the full solution in Cheet Sheets there is no way I would have
completed the game. The number of locations on offer is staggering
(especially in Act II) but the number of objects that will find their
way into the Luggage is quite ridiculous. What this means is there
are so many possible combinations that if you don't immediately know
the answer to a puzzle you probably never will. The old adventurers
trick of trying to use every object with every location during long
"sticking points" (those situations where you just haven't got the
faintest idea of what to do next) is nigh impossible unless you have
taken the next fortnight of work.
This wouldn't be so bad if the puzzles weren't so hard and in many
cases illogical. Once into the middle stages of the game there are
long periods of wondering around from location to location completely
at a loss as to what to do next, passing time by talking to the
various characters you meet who all have exactly the same thing to say
every time you talk to them. There is nothing wrong with a game that
offers a good challenge, but this goes one step beyond that. Unless
you have some sort of telepathic ability that will link your mind into
the programmers brains it is very unlikely you'll make it to Act IV
without cheating.
Still, should you develop a superhuman ability to make sense of the
illogical there are a number of interesting things to look out for.
For instance Eric Idle is reponsible for playing the voice of
Rincewind, and a fine job he does too. But every now and then Eric
isn't speaking the lines of Rincewind at all, instead another guy
does his best to mimic the voice of Mr Idle. Whoever he is I
suggest he stear clear of local talent competitions. Its really
quite laughably poor. I can only guess that TWG forgot to get all
the lines required to be recorded so one of the programmers had to
fill in. Bizarre.
Also the more persistant player who reaches the final stages of the
game may get to see Terry Pratchett himself play a non-speaking role.
At least I THINK its suppose to be Terry Pratchett!
Don't let this review put you off the game altogether. Even I stuck
around right to the bitter end so it must have some good aspects.
But was it worth it? Was the end game sequence any good? Well, the
answer is I don't know - the graphics were hardly visible through
the swarm of bugs!
Don't agree? Fancy defending the game? Just want to start up an
argument!? Then mail me at the Cheets Sheets BBS - simply post your
message to Martin Keen.
Copyright (c) 1995 Eurowave Leisure Ltd.