Lancelot - Level 9/Mandarin RRP œ19.95

Level 9 have been writing and producing adventures for many years 
now  and  have produced a wide range of titles.  Some  have  been 
produced  on  their  own,  some with Rainbird and  this  one  was 
brought out by Mandarin.

I  have  long been fascinated by the Arthurian legends so  I  was 
very  keen to see this adventure,  especially as the  pre-release 
hype  made  much  of  the fact that Pete  Austin  was  also  very 
interested  in them and was planning a faithful rendition of  the 
stories.

You know what they say .....  sometimes the more you look forward 
to something, the greater your disappointment in the end!

Before  going  into  details,  let's take a  look  at  the  basic 
package.  In  the game,  you play Lancelot.  The game comes in  3 
parts  on  one  disk.  Parts 1 and 2  deal  with  Lancelot  being 
knighted  and  becoming the best knight in the land  through  his 
heroic deeds.  Part 3 is the Quest for the Holy  Grail.  Ideally, 
you  should play part 3 after completing parts 1 and 2 but it  is 
not essential.

Describing the game as a 3-part story is a misnomer.  Really,  it 
is  in  2 parts,  the first taking place in  Camelot  and  Logris 
(Logris  being the region where Lancelot must do his good  deeds) 
and the second being the Quest.

The fact is that you can travel between Camelot and Logris  quite 
happily  while  playing (even though these are described  in  the 
packaging  as separate games).  It's only when you go to  use  an 
item in Camelot that you had collected in Logris that you realise 
Something Is Up;  the whatever-it-is has vanished ....  hmmm .... 
strange.  Retrace  your  steps again,  go  through  the  junction 
between  Logris and Camelot and,  here is a pile of items on  the 
ground.  The answer is, YOU can travel between the two areas, but 
you can't carry anything with you. Clever, eh?


Once this fact sinks in, you start to notice other little things, 
any one of which would normally be ignored in a game but together 
start to look rather odd.

The graphics are excellent, but a couple of pictures are repeated  
for several castles.  Was this due to restrictions imposed by the 
game being released on just one disk?  In which case,  why didn't 
they go mad and use two! Those  pictures start to drive you crazy 
after a while every time they pop up.

Then there's travelling around the area.  There is a forest  maze 
which  contains  the  Wailing  Castle.  The  forest  has  umpteen 
locations but since the adventure has a GOTO command,  these  are 
rather  unnecessary.  On the other hand,  if you travel from  the 
Marches to Scotland,  that takes one move as does Scotland to the 
Orkneys. If the game has said "Lancelot travelled for many, weary 
miles till he reached the Orkneys",  it wouldn't have been so bad 
but  just  "Lancelot  rode north and was in  the  Orkneys"  isn't 
sufficient to create the right atmosphere!

The scoring is erratic. By using a bug, it is possible to bump up 
your  score by 50 points each time (I gave up when I got to  over 
1000 points). 

Some  of  the other bugs/mistakes include being able to  pick  up 
objects which, by rights, should be immovable, leaving a boat and 
returning  to shore by going through a door (!),  the sex of  the 
characters being confused (ie using "his horse" when referring to 
the  Damosel)  and  getting truncated messages  by  catching  the 
program  out  through doing the unexpected (eg "from  within  the 
guardroom, someone."). I could go on but I won't bore you.

The  problems aren't too hard and if you get stuck  it's  usually 
because  you're either assuming the problem is  more  complicated 
that it seems or because the answer is very obscure. A lot of the 
problems  involve working with other characters.  But  the  other 
knights  are really wooden as they get confused by  the  simplest 
instructions and stand around pressing dents out of their shields 
or examining their swords for small nicks.   

It  is  worth giving a quick mention to the  competition  run  in 
conjunction with the game,  the prize being an expensive  replica 
of  the Holy Grail.  Congratulations to John Sweeney who won  it. 
John  is well-known to anyone who reads New Atari  User  magazine 
which is produced by Page 6.  I think he earned every penny  with 
the  amount of extra time he must have spent playing the game  to 
discover all the hidden codes in it!

I was lucky;  I bought Lancelot very cheaply mail-order. If I had 
paid full price for this game (as a friend of mine did),  I would 
have  been even more annoyed by the number of bugs in it  (as  he 
was).  I would be really interested to know how much  playtesting 
the game received and what notice was taking of the  playtesters' 
comments.  Knowing  that  Level 9 are capable  of  writing  truly 
terrific games,  it is a shame to see their name on such an awful 
program.  

                                              Sue