Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)
Since MacScare emerged on the scene and I no longer have my
traditional reason for not playing more ADRIFT titles, I decided to
download a bunch of games and give them a shot. Here's a quick
description of my experience, which is sort of a combination of review
and MacScare feedback.
First, a disclaimer: ADRIFT's parser issues really do make me spend a
lot more time than I otherwise would cycling through possible
phrasings of things. If you can just accept that annoying fact and
move on, there's some entertainment to be had anyway. It's a little
like eating stinky cheeses. I'm not going to talk about this problem
too much in the reviews. Take it as read.
The Last Hour, by Roberto Grassi
My full review will soon appear elsewhere, but as far as I can tell,
this didn't generate any errors with MacScare.
The Woods Are Dark, by Cannibal
This starts off reasonably promising. It's a horror game set in
Ireland, and the Irish local color felt fairly realistic to me -- some
of my favorite bits of the game are to be found in the dialogue that
establishes backstory. I haven't been to Ireland and have no idea
whether Irish people actually speak like this, but there were some
parts of the conversation that felt realistic rather than generic or
stereotypical, and I enjoyed them.
The body of the game is about exploring a deserted cottage for clues
about the murder of some people who lived there long before. The
setting is austere but, for the most part, well done. Then I ran into
a point where I simply wasn't allowed to pick up an object that had
been brought into my environment due to an event. I kept getting a
message saying that I "didn't have it with me", or words to that
effect. This was mysterious. I found a walkthrough for the game; I
followed it precisely but still wasn't able to get past that buggy
point. Therefore, I am suspecting a flaw in MacScare rather than in
the game code, though it's hard to be sure.
The walkthrough included a transcript, so I was able to read what
happens past the point where I got stuck. Unfortunately some of the
puzzles seem to be a little arbitrary, and the writing becomes less
restrained and more over the top, in the later portions. I have this
problem with almost every horror game/book/movie I have ever
experienced, though -- once I get past the creepy hinty bits into the
graphic revelations, I'm turned off. Even Anchorhead, one of my
favorite IF games ever, did this a little. So these comments deserve
a grain of salt.
Legacy of a Princess, by "Me"
This appears to be largely a parody/expansion/fanfic/something based
on The Legend of Zelda. As I never played the original, it didn't
mean much to me. There were a number of rooms where there was nothing
to do, and the initial several moves of plot were of the variety where
X tells you to go somewhere and see Y, and then Y tells you to go and
see Z, and Z tells you to visit X again. So I wasn't terribly
enthralled, and quit. Someone with nostalgic feelings towards Zelda
might have a different experience. Or not.
Paint!!!, by David Whyld
Of the four games here, probably my favorite in terms of raw
entertainment value, but also the one I most suspect of showing bugs
under MacScare. In this game, you're the head of a paint crew hired
to make over a shabby office. Your workmen are sloppy and lazy, your
equipment is not the best, and you yourself (it's implied) are not so
bright. Everything goes wrong that could possibly go wrong, not to
mention a few additional events of which you would never have dreamed.
What's good: this is another light-comedy/farce IF, somewhat in the
vein of "To Hell in a Hamper" and "Gourmet". I like this sort of
thing, especially as a break from more somber works. I wasn't quite
as blown away by the writing of "Paint!!!" as the writing of
"Gourmet", but I think that's largely a question of the narrative
voice being one I sympathized with a little less. And the farcical
events are a little more extreme. Still, it gets in some funny
moments and isn't drab.
What's more, it offers a lot of room for replaying. The events of
"Paint!!!" will unfold no matter what you do, and your job is to
optimize the situation as much as possible. I find this format fairly
effective when it's done well: you're less likely to get totally stuck
than in a purely win-or-lose type of game, you can enjoy playing
around trying to find the variant endings, and so on.
What is not so good: some of the puzzle solutions are a little on the
odd side, and there are one or two that I doubt I would have come up
with without hints from the author. Parts of the game are fairly
timing-finicky, and in particular there are things that you can
trigger if you do the right action at the right time, but you don't
always have reason in advance to know that you should be doing them.
For a one-room game, there are a surprising number of red herrings.
Moreover, at least in my playthrough of the game, there were some
objects that turned up more or less inexplicably, and some timed
events that seemed a little off. From exchanging email with the
author, I'm starting to suspect that these again are the result of
MacScare errors rather than flaws in the game's programming, though I
don't know enough to diagnose these in more detail.
Also, I promised not to rant too much about parser flaws, but there
are a few in here that are particularly bad, and that should have been
patched over, because they create definite guess-the-verb situations.
Finally, I mentioned that this kind of game design allows for lots of
different fun endings. This is true, but I was actually a little
disappointed by the specific endings to be found in this one. Mostly,
they amount to being paid different amounts of money for finishing the
job; more wacky variety would have been more entertaining.
So I liked the concept and the writing but had some issues with the
execution. This is one of those games that would be more fun if it
were rereleased in a hardier form -- though, again, it's hard to say
how much of that is the game and how much the interpreter I was using.
(In fact, all the farce-IF I know of seems to have gone through
phases of severe bugginess, even if it eventually wound up being
rereleased in a fairly polished form. Maybe this is just a particular
danger of the genre? Anything with lots of timed events is going to
be trouble, I'm sure.)
====
-- Emily
Since MacScare emerged on the scene and I no longer have my
traditional reason for not playing more ADRIFT titles, I decided to
download a bunch of games and give them a shot. Here's a quick
description of my experience, which is sort of a combination of review
and MacScare feedback.
First, a disclaimer: ADRIFT's parser issues really do make me spend a
lot more time than I otherwise would cycling through possible
phrasings of things. If you can just accept that annoying fact and
move on, there's some entertainment to be had anyway. It's a little
like eating stinky cheeses. I'm not going to talk about this problem
too much in the reviews. Take it as read.
The Last Hour, by Roberto Grassi
My full review will soon appear elsewhere, but as far as I can tell,
this didn't generate any errors with MacScare.
The Woods Are Dark, by Cannibal
This starts off reasonably promising. It's a horror game set in
Ireland, and the Irish local color felt fairly realistic to me -- some
of my favorite bits of the game are to be found in the dialogue that
establishes backstory. I haven't been to Ireland and have no idea
whether Irish people actually speak like this, but there were some
parts of the conversation that felt realistic rather than generic or
stereotypical, and I enjoyed them.
The body of the game is about exploring a deserted cottage for clues
about the murder of some people who lived there long before. The
setting is austere but, for the most part, well done. Then I ran into
a point where I simply wasn't allowed to pick up an object that had
been brought into my environment due to an event. I kept getting a
message saying that I "didn't have it with me", or words to that
effect. This was mysterious. I found a walkthrough for the game; I
followed it precisely but still wasn't able to get past that buggy
point. Therefore, I am suspecting a flaw in MacScare rather than in
the game code, though it's hard to be sure.
The walkthrough included a transcript, so I was able to read what
happens past the point where I got stuck. Unfortunately some of the
puzzles seem to be a little arbitrary, and the writing becomes less
restrained and more over the top, in the later portions. I have this
problem with almost every horror game/book/movie I have ever
experienced, though -- once I get past the creepy hinty bits into the
graphic revelations, I'm turned off. Even Anchorhead, one of my
favorite IF games ever, did this a little. So these comments deserve
a grain of salt.
Legacy of a Princess, by "Me"
This appears to be largely a parody/expansion/fanfic/something based
on The Legend of Zelda. As I never played the original, it didn't
mean much to me. There were a number of rooms where there was nothing
to do, and the initial several moves of plot were of the variety where
X tells you to go somewhere and see Y, and then Y tells you to go and
see Z, and Z tells you to visit X again. So I wasn't terribly
enthralled, and quit. Someone with nostalgic feelings towards Zelda
might have a different experience. Or not.
Paint!!!, by David Whyld
Of the four games here, probably my favorite in terms of raw
entertainment value, but also the one I most suspect of showing bugs
under MacScare. In this game, you're the head of a paint crew hired
to make over a shabby office. Your workmen are sloppy and lazy, your
equipment is not the best, and you yourself (it's implied) are not so
bright. Everything goes wrong that could possibly go wrong, not to
mention a few additional events of which you would never have dreamed.
What's good: this is another light-comedy/farce IF, somewhat in the
vein of "To Hell in a Hamper" and "Gourmet". I like this sort of
thing, especially as a break from more somber works. I wasn't quite
as blown away by the writing of "Paint!!!" as the writing of
"Gourmet", but I think that's largely a question of the narrative
voice being one I sympathized with a little less. And the farcical
events are a little more extreme. Still, it gets in some funny
moments and isn't drab.
What's more, it offers a lot of room for replaying. The events of
"Paint!!!" will unfold no matter what you do, and your job is to
optimize the situation as much as possible. I find this format fairly
effective when it's done well: you're less likely to get totally stuck
than in a purely win-or-lose type of game, you can enjoy playing
around trying to find the variant endings, and so on.
What is not so good: some of the puzzle solutions are a little on the
odd side, and there are one or two that I doubt I would have come up
with without hints from the author. Parts of the game are fairly
timing-finicky, and in particular there are things that you can
trigger if you do the right action at the right time, but you don't
always have reason in advance to know that you should be doing them.
For a one-room game, there are a surprising number of red herrings.
Moreover, at least in my playthrough of the game, there were some
objects that turned up more or less inexplicably, and some timed
events that seemed a little off. From exchanging email with the
author, I'm starting to suspect that these again are the result of
MacScare errors rather than flaws in the game's programming, though I
don't know enough to diagnose these in more detail.
Also, I promised not to rant too much about parser flaws, but there
are a few in here that are particularly bad, and that should have been
patched over, because they create definite guess-the-verb situations.
Finally, I mentioned that this kind of game design allows for lots of
different fun endings. This is true, but I was actually a little
disappointed by the specific endings to be found in this one. Mostly,
they amount to being paid different amounts of money for finishing the
job; more wacky variety would have been more entertaining.
So I liked the concept and the writing but had some issues with the
execution. This is one of those games that would be more fun if it
were rereleased in a hardier form -- though, again, it's hard to say
how much of that is the game and how much the interpreter I was using.
(In fact, all the farce-IF I know of seems to have gone through
phases of severe bugginess, even if it eventually wound up being
rereleased in a fairly polished form. Maybe this is just a particular
danger of the genre? Anything with lots of timed events is going to
be trouble, I'm sure.)
====
-- Emily
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