Operation Blue Sunrise - author Colin Campbell, on PD 437
         (Shareware, text STAC adventure for ST only)

                Reviewed by Piotr Tyminski

I promised myself not to review, under any circumstances, games
which have been already reviewed but, being an ugly and
untrustworthy person, I am tempted to do the horrible thing NOW.
The game in question was previewed in SynTax no. 12, as well as
a mini review which was in issue no. 14 but who cares?

So a couple of months ago I ordered "Operation Blue Sunrise"
from Mike Goodman since what he had written in his Public
Domain/Shareware guide was more than enough to encourage me.  I
got version 3.00 (compiled August '92) at that time. And what can
I tell you? Imagine a game which is unfinished (the author, Colin
Campbell, is not even trying to hide it; is he mad or what?), has
couple of bugs lurking here and there and in case you are totally
brainwashed and decide to register it anyway, you don't even get
half of the things which are promised in the .DOC file.  Oh yes,
the author should immediately go to the wall.

Eeer... really?  Well, actually it's not the case. Honestly, it
turned out to be so damn good that I can't think of it becoming
even better, i.e.  when Colin finishes the whole thing (you
guessed, the game was really crap, but Colin has paid me a
commission to write this).

Seriously now.  The game was written with the old trusty STAC but
it's text only.  Mind you, there's so much of it that a standard
ST disk is just almost fully crammed with data, so I can see no
way to include any graphics, except for the intro screen (which is
there).  And that's very good I think; it just lets your
imagination play.  I was pretty impressed with what can be
achieved with STAC; I've just never thought of it as a text only
system (OK, I used to play couple of STAC text only games but they
were simply poor comparing to "Sunrise").  Here, I believe STAC
must've been stretched to its limits to achieve such great
quality.  I got so hooked with the game that I sent out my
registration right away so now I can boast of having version 5
(compiled April '93).  I also got a printed certificate with my
name and address on it which is a proof of being an official Blue
Sunrise adventurer; a nice touch. Small, nicely printed booklet
was also included which is a kind of introduction for beginners to
adventure games; may not be of great value for experts but a great
thing for those of you who've never been into adventures in a real
way.

Documentation included in form of .DOC file is very well written
and should be available to registered users in printed form (I say
"should be" since the whole project is still being developed so
there are things which are not made available now).  On-disk
manual is extremely informative, at least when it comes to
technical things and general info but not much is revealed
regarding the plot itself, i.e.  what you are supposed to do in
the game.  Don't worry though, the nice touch is that there's
really not much to be explained since you just live your own life
there in the game and it's your private business what you are
going to end up with.  So to start with, you wake up in your
apartment, or in your shower cabin rather, to be precise and, yes,
you seem to be suffering from the NDS (you may not know it, you
are not Eastern European, aren't you?  So in case you wonder it's
a Next Day Syndrome, something which may happen to you next
morning after a Polish/Russian style bottle party. Mind you, it's
not a regular hangover, this we normally have day in day out so
nothing to get excited with, but NDS is something which makes you
regret you have ever been born.  I can't tell you more since one
of the symptoms is that one cannot remember anything).

Description in the game is so beautiful that it makes me thinking
that Colin must have gone through NDS himself, most probably while
travelling to Eastern Europe (by the way Colin, does your wife
know about it, eh?). The great thing about "Sunrise" is that it's
very user friendly, i.e.  you do not get those stupid "it's not
important" or "there's nothing interesting about the wall" type
responses all the time.  You can examine things almost endlessly.
Sure if you are stubborn enough you will get "there's nothing
interesting there" kind of response but all in all what "Sunrise"
gives you in terms of responses is far more than what you could
expect from an average adventure.  If you add all that great
humour ("Sunrise" is just packed with it) you get a nice feeling
of reality.

In "Sunrise" there's much more to an average empty room than in
any other adventure.  You can still examine walls, floor, ceiling,
whatever you fancy, and even if there's no œ1,000,000 in cash
lying there and the whole thing is just about damn ordinary room
all the responses you get are marvellous. Once I bumped into a
Vidiscreen in my room (kind of futuristic TV) I spent half an hour
changing channels and watching advertisements.  Do you ever watch
all those crap advertisements on TV?  Well, me neither, but in
"Sunrise" they're just worth watching them to death.  You can
touch, examine and operate most of the objects in the game, it
seems there's no restriction except for your invention.

You can talk to people, in fact you even should talk to them since
they have various bits of information which are indispensable for
you. Did I say there's no explanation what to start with?  Well,
what do you expect, having NDS in the morning (and being
unemployed), your hovercraft taken away by cops, etc.?  Think of
it as of a real life and it's going to reveal some incredibly
atmospheric world to discover.  Mind you, time's running in the
game, too, so try to keep your appointments since people may be
gone when you're late.  And if you ever decide to take some job
that's an important thing to remember.

Good thing is that you can use some special items in an
interesting way, i.e. if you are lucky enough to find a computer
terminal one day, you have to save your position, reset the game
and run other program on the disk, called TERMINAL.TOS. Then you
load your position into it and you're presented with a nice
on-screen terminal with lights flashing, codes to enter and data
to obtain.  Just more than an average bit of realism!  What should
hopefully follow, most probably at the end of summer - if things
go OK for Colin - is another sub-program: HELP.TOS. For those who
are hopelessly stuck this should be a godsend.  This will work in
a similar way to TERMINAL.TOS and will give hints and tips to lost
adventurers.

"Sunrise" has much more locations than any other adventure which I
have ever played; so far I have discovered around 100 of them and
this does not include an incredible maze of air shaft tunnels
which must have double that.  With all those incredible responses
and detailed descriptions it really shines.  You can even play a
female (in this case some of the responses are different from a
"male" version, it's worth to play both parts really to see the
responses), so there's not much you can complain about.  I can't
remember any spelling mistakes so the whole thing looks really
polished.

I will be now waiting for Colin to finish the whole project but in
case the idea of playing an unfinished game puts you off I tell
you: don't be stupid.  I have played enough finished adventures so
I know what I'm saying; with a couple of exceptions most of them
do not even come close to "Sunrise" quality. The "unfinished" one
is huge and gives you so much to explore that you may never need a
final version.  So don't hesitate and order the game from SynTax
library, what you get may be more that you could swallow.

And one more thing.  Enough was said about being fair with
shareware, you know what I mean. For all the enormous work which
must've gone into "Sunrise" Colin deserves your best support.  So
if you are into adventures, rush and get this one.  It's so damn
good you will not dare not to register it.  Simply, it may be the
only game you need.

@~The new version, 5.xx (beta 4) is now available ... Sue