The Legacy - MicroProse RRP œ44.95
                  (RPG for PC only)

                 A review by Roy Sims

The Legacy is an RPG based in an old haunted house in New England
(U.S.A) that your character has just inherited. At the start of the
game you can choose who that character will be from a reasonably
large selection. One of those available is none other than Professor
Henry Jones (I wonder if Steven Spielberg or George Lucas have seen
this?). There is an even split between male and female characters on
offer, but I eventually went for the Professor.

The game system employed in The Legacy cobbles together a number of
different elements in an attempt to create a new type of game.
Firstly we have the dear old 'Dungeon Master' style viewpoint,
although this time it's restricted in the physical size of each step
you take. For example, if you see a door ahead of you it looks as if
it is two DM sized steps away. However, one click on the cluster of
movement icons and you are suddenly face to face with the door.
Either I am strutting around like some crazed John Cleese (Minister
of Silly Walks) or the scale of the movement system is far too
large.

The second element is the style of the graphics. Instead of hand
drawn bitmap graphics, the locations have been raytraced for added
realism. In general the effect is not bad at all. Raytracing
programs are very good at doing wood panelled walls, doors,
staircases etc. At first glance they do look real, but on close
inspection they tend to degenerate in quality when they are
depicting things further away (down a murky corridor for example).
The monsters are also raytraced and they benefit from looking solid,
as opposed to the old flat cut out monsters found in DM (although
don't get me wrong, I'm still very fond of the monsters in DM). The
green zombies you encounter very early on in the game sway from side
to side and they look so solid that you feel that you could reach
out and pluck them out of the screen! There are hand drawn graphics
for the character's inventory panel, stats etc.  but these are very
poor. They suffer in comparison next to the raytraced glory of the
main locations and monsters.

The third element is the windowing system used. Anyone who saw
'Wonderland' a few years ago will immediately recognise the work of
Magnetic Scrolls. Basically, you can re-size each of the windows on
screen and drag them around and generally re-organise the screen
layout. You can also save this layout to the hard disk.  It's a nice
enough idea, but I found the default layout sufficient so the system
felt more like a gimmick than a really useful feature.

The game has an in-built auto-mapping system which should save you
time mapping it on paper. However, it isn't really large enough and
despite the fact that you can re-size the windows, there isn't
enough room for a large map and everything else. You can't make
notes on the map either which is something I always do if I'm
mapping on paper.


So what is it like to play? Well, I have to be honest and say that
whilst the raytraced stuff is nice to look at for a while it isn't
enough to save the game from being a bit of a poor effort. It's

effectively Dungeon Master, which is after all 6 years old now. The
combat system is a joke (aim then hit) and the game can end very
early on by a few swift swipes from a zombie. If you haven't saved
your game (and who will, having only been playing it for two minutes
when you will almost certainly die?) you have to quit and re-load!
The sound blaster music is suitably creepy but that is about the
best thing about this uninspired product.

I've mentioned the poor hand drawn graphics already, but I can't
understand how anyone can look at them and think that they are up to
the standard required on a PC or that they are in the appropriate
style for a product which is supposed to be 'scary'.  Whenever your
character sees a new monster for the first time you see his hair
stand on end and you hear him stifle a scream or two.  After a while
this gets tedious and it gets in the way of the game.  You can't do
anything whilst he is screaming and whilst this might be true in
real life, it just becomes really annoying after a very short period
of time.

Once again (following in the footsteps of Darklands which could have
been really good but turned out to be incredibly tedious and bug
ridden), Microprose have delivered a very disappointing RPG
which does nothing for their reputation which has been flagging of
late.  It's hard to see why they thought this game would do well.
I'm not saying that every game should be original, but they should
at least add something different or try and do the job properly. I
can just see the marketing people hoping that the raytraced location
graphics would make people forget how uninspiring the actual game
is. I couldn't believe how basic it is and how slowly it runs on my
33mhz 386 either. It was almost like running it under Windows!

To conclude, The Legacy is simply not very good. If you want to play
a game that is quite playable and is at the cutting edge of current
technology, go for 'Ultima Underworld II' instead. There lies an
interesting comparison, because whilst 'Underworld II' has the
flimsiest slip case I've ever seen, I had to surgically remove 'The
Legacy' from its sleeve as it just didn't fit properly! Give me the
strong boxes of Mindscape's 'Legend' any day!