Cream of the Crop 22/Cream of the Crop 22.iso/games/csmag51.zip/INSTALL.DAT/2EVIEW01.TXT

Text File | 1996-07-14 | 13KB | 266 lines

~A Collection of Reviews
3
DISCWLD.PCX
PHANT1.PCX
PHANT2.PCX

GAME REVIEWS BY LANCE MEPSTED

After reading Lu Richardson's article in Cheetsheets issue 50 I
thought I would write some short reviews on games that I have
played.  Some of them have been dire and others really excellent but
the strange thing is that my views are often very different from
others.



~DISCWORLD (A review by Lance Mepsted)

Well everyone in the world seems to love it, except me that is.  I
bought this adventure expecting to be in stitches at the comic
genius of Eric Idle, Kate Robbins et al, amazed by the lush graphics
and challenged by the ingenius puzzles.  Well the voice overs were
fine, except for the times that Rincewind is about to say something
that the programmers forgot to get recorded.  Instead of Eric's
superlative acting one of the programmers of perhaps the cleaners
pipes in with the lines instead!  The sentences sometimes get
repeated and even missed out in many instances are replaced by text
instead.

Oh well moans aside, surely the puzzles will not fail to tax me, I
thought.  I said "tax me" not infuriate me.  There seemed no logic
at all to the puzzles.  To give an example - at one stage you had to
stick a frog in the mouth of a drunk in order to allow a butterfly
which is up by a lampost to be caught.  Ah well I hear you say, you
can just try all your objects with all your locations.  Well that
may be so but due to the existence of L-Space, which incidentally I
felt was copied directly from Lucasarts' "Day of the Tentacle",
meant the combinations and the amount of walking about between
locations made this impractical or at least annoying.

All in all I hated Discworld.  I had eagerly awaited its release and
tentatively explored the first few locations when I finally got it
on the first day of sale.  A few game hours later my wife and I
played the rest of the game with the solution in front of us just to
see the graphics and hear the actors.  Needless to say I traded the
game in as soon as I had finished it.

Now enough of my whining about bad games



~DAY OF THE TENTACLE (A short review by Lance Mepsted)

Simply one of the best graphic adventure games available, and now on
budget for ú10.  If you have not played this one then it is a must.
I loved the Monkey Island series back in the days of the Amiga
(which I am selling hopefully on the adverts section) but DOT was
far better both graphically, puzzlewise (if there is such a word)
and it was far funnier.  The voiceovers in DOT were the best I have
heard in any game and this contributed greatly to the humour.

Now for some more whining



~PHANTASMOGORIA (A review by Lance Mepsted)

Well, what can I say!  This was 1995's worst game for me.  Now I
know people especially computer magazine reviewers love to slate the
interactive movie type adventure quoting lack of control and
gameplay.  I think they are jumping on the bandwagon.  It is almost
as unacceptable to say you like this new genre as to say you still
play Dungeons & Dragons at 28 years of age which "Oops" I guess I
have just done.  I LOVE INTERACTIVE MOVIE ADVENTURES.  Yes! I have
done it.  The secrets out now.  Anyway, now thats all cleared up I
still hate Phantasmogoria.  Why?  Well here's my reasons

1. Adrian, the heroine wears the same clothes throughout Day 1 to 7.
Now if I was Don, her husband I think I would be trying to bump her
off if she had the same knickers on after seven days.

2. The hint master.  I think solutions should be sold either with
games or at reasonable prices (no Virgin or Origin ú18 is not
reasonable)

3. The acting by Don was abismal.  There's a lot of sighing and
stomping around and so on.  Just when you think something is going
to happen he stomps off or huffs again, Adrian adjusts her hair and
you get the cursor back again.

4. Its not just the acting.  John Hurt or Peter O'Toole would have
had difficulty making the role of Don convincing because the plot is
awful.  The story would make "Revenge of the Killer Bikini Vampire
Girls" look like a well crafted classic.  Its basically a "man gets
posessed but does nothing but get a bit moody then eventually try to
kill wife film" Oh dear I have given away the whole plot.  Now
contrast this with Sierra's next movie type game "Gabriel Knight -
the Beast Within".  The plot was immense and intriguing.  Yet it
used exactly the same interface prooving that interactive movies
work but you must have a good story to tell.

Overall it seems that Roberta Williams was trying to get away from
criticism of the cutesy image of the King's Quest series by creating
this gore fest.  I think she probably went a bit far.



~GABRIEL KNIGHT - THE BEAST WITHIN (A review by Lance Mepsted)

Wow what a story.  Acting wasn't half bad either.  The locations
were convincing and it was refreshing to play a game set in the real
world rather than being whisked off to yet another dimension.  Not
only this but all my O level German came flooding back to me.

When I started playing this game I thought "Oh Know it's
Phantasmogoria 2"  This is because it uses an almost identical
interface.  And the game engine looks familiar too.  The characters
start to walk to something you clicked on and then the picture
flicks to the next seen after a few seconds of CD access.  It is
certainly not perfect but it works OK.  I even thought Gabriel was
being played by Don from Phantasmogoria at first as he looked a bit
similar.  As we played the game though an intriguing story line
emerged involving werewolves, Barons and hunting clubs, Royalty and
beautiful palaces.

This was easily my favourite game of 1996 so far.  If you like in
depth storylines tnen buy it.



~YOU DON'T KNOW JACK (A review by Lance Mepsted)

I have included this software as I don't know anyone else who has
it.  YDKJ takes the form of an American quiz show.  Oh know I hear
you say.  It will be zany and not funny at all.  You would be wrong.
The cast that provide the voices of the producers are very well
acted and perfect for the part.  The music is very apt for this
setting and the graphics although nothing amazing, do the job well.

You have the choice of a 7 question session or a 21 question session
and you can play with 1 to 3 players.  Of course if their are more
people at your dinner party or whatever, they can team up.  One
person from each will be assigned a button on the keyboard with
which to buzz in and answer the question or to "Screw" your
opponent.  No don't get excited it just means you can force one of
the other players to answer the question if you think they won't
know the answer.

The questions themselves are not your usual trivial pursuit type
questions at all.  For a start they are nearly all multiple choice
so you are never completely stuck for an anser.  There are various
categories that range from "Puppetry and Heavy Metal Music" to
"Scientific Experiments and Bad Karma".  Every so often you'll get a
"Gibberish Question".  This is usually a famous song or saying that
is typed up on the screen in gibberish and you have to type in on
the keyboard the actual song/phrase.  You get clues as time
progresses but the amount of money that you can win decreases also.
It's all a bit hard to explain but it is excellent for those
occasions that friends have come round, conversation is starting to
flag a bit and your fed up of Monopoly or other board games.



~ENTOMORPH (A review by Lance Mepsted)

If you like the idea of RPGs but when you actually play them it
feels too much like hard work, this is the game for you. I always
find myself making copious notes about locations because I know that
in six months time when I am  desperate to finsh I will have
forgotten about the little blind pixie who needs a gem of seeing.
It is about this time that I take a step back from the computer and
think "What am I doing.  I hate doing this.  I'll never do another
RPG again."  Then Ultima 8 Pagan came out and I played it thinking
"What am I do... well you get the picture.  With Entomorph it is
good fun from start to finish.  The adventure has a very strong
storybook feel to it and indeed the plot is brilliant.  It is all
based around insects including Panorpid (Giant Bees),  Thelyd (Giant
ants) and so on.  These creatures are intelligent and are in
collusion with a section of the human population called Nobles.  The
whole thing is sinister and some of the population become rebels
whilst others want these insects around because they do all the
menial tasks.

The interface could not be simpler, with a sort of top down view,
the graphics are SVGA and quite good.  The left mouse button picks
things up and interacts with things whilst the right mouse button
moves your man.

The story is reasonably long but not of the Ultima Underworld type
length where I am fed up long before the end.  So if you like RPGs
but like me don't want to be still adventuring in twelve months time
this is a good buy.


~ENTOMORPH TIP

Oh yes just one tip on Entomorph.  Don't whatever you do be tempted
to spit over the wall of the palace at the guards inside.  You will
kill them eventually but when you finally get to the end when you
enter the palace your first task is to fight in the arena.  If you
have killed the combatants then the program has a fit and can't load
the next scene.



~UNDER A KILLING MOON (A short review by Lance Mepsted)

The reason I want to give my opinion of UAKM is that many other
magazines said that this game was rubbish yet another movie game
flop.  Well for me UAKM when it first came out was a major
breakthrough in adventure gaming.  It was the first adventure I
played where you could move in a first person perspective in such
detailed rendered backgrounds including digitised video characters.
The puzzles are a mixture of the 7th Guest type eg reassembling
notes out of fragments and your ordinary fetch an object and use it
type.  I for one can't wait for UAKM 2 "The Pandora Directive"



~FLIGHT OF THE AMAZON QUEEN (A short review by Lance Mepsted)

Another good solid adventure packed full of puzzles.  OK so the
graphics are only VGA but they are bright and colourful and do the
job.  The humour is not bad but not as funny as Day of the Tentacle,
more like Simon the Sorceror.  The adventure is quite long but not
too dificult.  I only got stuck once but still took several days to
complete it.  The low price tag makes this one quite a good buy.



~RIDDLE OF MASTER LU (A review by Lance Mepsted)

The puzzles in this game are just excellent if a little hard.  When
I say hard I do not mean illogical.  Often when a software house
want to make their game taxing they just throw in ridiculously
illogical puzzles so that you would never think of using those
objects together to solve problem.  This is a 'cop out'  It's a bit
like a jig-saw manufacturer making the pieces fit together but the
picture not match up.  The whole enjoyment of solving a puzzle is
finding the logic behind the puzzle makers idea and therby not
letting him out wit you.

The ROML does this perfectly.  Puzzles are not just the "Fetch
something and use it elsewhere type.  For instance the combination
type is used where you have to find translations to heiroglyphics.
You may be given some and have to deduce the others by simple
mathematical series.  At another location, a laboratory you use only
the objects that you find in the room to work a contraption using
compressed air cylinders and pistons to free an emerald from a glass
jar.  A little chemistry knowledge is then needed to read a periodic
table in order to open the door.  Brilliant stuff.  Be warned - have
the Cheetsheets solution close to hand (I spent ú6 on telephone
calls to the hint line before I heard about Cheetsheets).

This game is not only brilliant in the logic department but the
graphics are among the best I have seen to date.  There is a little
video footage mainly to show a close up of the character's faces as
they speak.  The characters are sprites but are amazingly detailed.
You can even see the creases on Ripley's trousers move as he walks.
The animation is just as good.  I thought the sprites were in fact
digitised actors at first due to the level of detail and the
convincing movement.

I got the OEM version (no box) for just ú12.99.  At this price the
game is the best value for money to date.