There are very few science fiction authors, living or dead, who deserve to be called "legendary." Ray Bradbury is one of them and, thankfully, he still falls into the living category. One of his most famous books has just been brought into the interactive age with The Martian Chronicles Adventure Game, from Simon and Schuster Interactive. In fact, this is a good bit more than just an adventure game based on Bradbury's 1950 short story collection. One almost gets the sense of the game being a secondary addition to a multimedia tribute to the original book.
For those unfamiliar with the book, it is a series of short stories of man's first landings on the Red Planet, the unsuccessful attempts of the telepathic Martians to prevent humans from colonizing their world, the building of human settlements, the sudden abandonment of same as atomic war rages on Earth, and the settling in of the few remaining humans, who are now the only Martians left. While The Martian Chronicles is permeated with Cold War paranoia, it still remains relatively undated and a powerful read.
In addition to the titular game, this product lets you enjoy some choice readings from the book with some nicely designed animation sequences. These segments really get across Bradbury's incredible skill with words. So much of the story revolves around human nature and the way Western man has invariably approached colonization of new territory. Yet the men are also sympathetic and lonely characters, stranded from everything they've ever known. Make no mistake, this is literature. There's also a very well done interactive video interview with Bradbury, containing his insights on the origins of the book, critical reaction, and predictions of the future.
The actual game puts the player in the role of a human explorer on Mars, looking for evidence of two previous expeditions which disappeared during their mission to scout the planet for a possible (inevitable) human colony. The landing site is just outside of the City of Xi, the ruins of a large settlement and proof positive that intelligent life once roamed the planet.
While there are a few signs of the disappeared humans (mostly clipped-out news articles about the increasingly rough political situation on Earth), Martian hieroglyphics are far more numerous, carved into the sandy rock walls. Thanks to the work of the earlier expeditions, you have a scanning device that can instantly translate any of these engravings into English. The scanner can also see through illusions, which is particularly important because of the Martians' telepathic skills which can disguise reality from the naked eye.
Any engravings or pictures that you come across can also be photographed and transmitted back to your ship for later study. Your tool kit also includes a mapping device that compares your current location with the cartographic studies made by the previous expeditions before their disappearance. You don't have to carry all of these tools all of the time, by the way. You have a limited amount of energy you can take with you on the planet's surface, and carrying more tools requires more energy. If you find yourself running low, you can teleport back to the ship and recharge at any time, then zap back to the location you just left.
This game follows much of the same exploratory style of the ever-popular Myst, but is, unfortunately, not nearly as well-constructed. The most basic problems are just inherent in the thing having been designed with Macromedia. The directional cursor flickers deliberately, to create a sort of fluorescent technological feel. But when other items are moving on the screen, it can really interfere with the cursor, causing it to vanish and reappear, and it only responds to your commands during the fraction of a second it is on screen. This didn't happen very often, but even once is too often for this kind of annoying bug.
There are also some continuity problems with your tools. For some reason, there are areas where the scanner cannot be used, so you just don't have the option. And if you thought you could take pictures of hieroglyphics and translate them back at your ship, forget it. You can translate on the spot, but the scanner does not work on board your ship, so you'd better take some notes!
While these problems are annoying, they are hardly unforgivable. The Martian landscape as designed by Byron Preiss Multimedia is rich with mystery and atmosphere and is lots of fun to explore. There are some well-designed puzzles and traps that will keep you on your toes. The orchestral soundtrack is well suited to the creepy surroundings, and the voice acting is very well done. But given the design problems, it's probably a good idea to keep in mind that this package, despite its title, is NOT primarily an adventure game, but a tribute to a great book. You won't be disappointed that way.
