LURE OF THE TEMPTRESS - Virgin RRP œ30.99-œ35.99
         (Graphic adventure for ST, PC and Amiga)
      A personal view of the ST version by Peter Hague
           Author of THE OBSCURE NATURALIST

Lure of the Temptress is the sort of game you buy because the
screen shots on the back of the box look cosy and not because you
may be feeling particularly randy that day. Besides, sex and
computer games just don't mix - we've all seen that horrible
picture of the two ray-traced figures snogging - of course, it's
the virtual saliva we've got to worry about, not to mention the
virtual bad breath. Anyway, Lure is announced as 'virtual theatre'
and this seems a reasonably apt description of it and leads us
into some good, clean fun.

There is great humour to be found in the text and this cushions
what too often becomes a boredom of mindless wandering around
asking the various characters for help and information. It's not
that I dislike solving clues, it's just that the clues are not
particularly logical in places and one simply has to go through a
seemingly endless process of trial and error, time and time again,
which is not very rewarding but as I say, at least there was a
reasonably fresh supply of jokes to keep interest up for a while.

Inevitably though, this adventure had become boring for me well
before the potentially interesting bit of meeting the dragon, and
by the time the gates to the caves had opened I felt a bit like
Ratpouch - I could quite easily have stayed outside while Goewin
went in and got on with it herself.  However, the Caves actually
held a minor puzzle and it was then that I realised how few of
these there had been thus far.

The token bit of fighting at this point was also a bit wearing -
this seemed more of an annoyance than fun and simply a matter of
dressing accurately in the right place for the correct number of
the times - I found myself pining for the mobile swash-buckling of
Dungeon Master.  In fact, from here on in, the game became a bit
of a drudgery and I must confess to resorting to someone's hints
and tips near the end - not that they worked though!

Games often seem to do themselves in by falling over their own
technicalities. For instance, I played Lure on the ST and was
annoyed by the amount of disk accessing I had to sit through - in
fact, at the very beginning of the game I estimated that seven out
of the first fifteen minutes of game play had been spent listening
to the disk drive whirring! One of the unnecessary reasons for
this is that every time you get walloped by a Skorl and have to
start again, you have to swap disks, wait for the animation to be
loaded and then wait a few seconds while it sorts itself out.
Still, it all helps to focus the mind and after a while you soon
realise you can't afford to slack. Being whacked by the torture of
disk accessing soon becomes a far worse punishment than any Skorl
can dish out - why can't I ever put these games onto my hard disk?
PC owners can!

Also, every single screen is loaded individually too, so every
move from one location to another means a further concentration
breaking wait. I suppose the good thing is that it only took a
couple of days to play, but that's hardly value for money, is it?
I paid the full price of nearly œ30.00 for this some time ago.

On the plus side is the graphics. They are nothing short of
excellent - with the exception of some screens that seem to have
evaded the attention of the usual fine detail. I must also admit
to enjoying playing the game for about a day or so before the
endless trudging around finding often illogical means to solve
obvious problems got me down. For instance: It was obvious that my
character would have to turn into Selena via the Wizard's Potion,
for which I would need an empty receptacle - but what logic stated
I should give the gem to the barmaid in order to get the flask of
strong beer? Also, the logic that told me I could only empty the
flask by giving it to the Blacksmith was very weak? I could think
of easier ways to help the player a bit here and make the
adventure more logical and playable, but even in this fairly small
and not very complex game it seems that these writers were being
over coy - a good riddle is not made better by writing it in
Latin.

Still, they cheered us up with their witty lines but perhaps
finally, and ironically, at the expense of the fun.

The end of the game came more as a welcome relief than an
anticlimax, but was probably both - after a second token
mechanical struggle with a beast you enter a chamber to meet the
gorgeous Selena to do the final business with the 'Magical Eye',
however, the action here is all done for you and having been
treated to some more animation ... that's it really. You can
switch off and go to hospital to have the sound of disk drive
whirring removed from your ears.

You may not think so, but on the whole I enjoyed playing this game
for most of the time I played it. Afterwards however, it feels
like the proverbial Chinese meal - it seemed sufficient at the
time, but I'm empty now.

I must also criticise the copy protection - it has to be the most
tedious system I have ever seen - who wants to get home from work
or school and thumb through half a manual matching up characters?
Surely the better way is: Page 16, Line 3, Word 3.

Score: Graphics 9, Sound 5, Atmosphere 7, Gameplay 6
Overall impression 76%

Tip for your sanity: Pay close attention to detail - when an
object has been looked at another object, or part, is often
revealed within.