The Great Archaeological Race!
        by John LaBonney / Absolute Zero - SynTax PD 527
                   (TADS Text adventure on PC)

                    Reviewed by Neil Shipman

If someone said, "Indiana Jones!" to you, you'd probably think of
one or more of his graphic adventures with an archaeological
theme. Now you have the opportunity of playing the Assistant
Curator of a Boston museum and emulating your hero (albeit in
text and without a Nazi anywhere to be seen) as you search for
valuable exhibits in Brazil.

The museum is dying, there have been cutbacks in spending and
employee morale is extremely low. What is needed to turn around
this state of affairs is the discovery and display of some new
artifacts. So, when the phone in your office rings one morning
and you trot along to the Curator's office with the report you
have been working on, you are interested in the newspaper
clipping he gives you.

It appears that another archaeological team has had to cut short
an expedition to Hareda despite the promising find of a number of
gold urns which have been uncovered upon cutting a tunnel a
little way into the mountain there. (Blooming load of Philistines
in charge of the budgets in this game!)

Somehow your boss has scraped together enough cash to finance a
last chance search and, hopefully, save the museum. You take the
plane ticket he offers you, grab everything in sight that may
help in your forthcoming exploits and hop in a black sedan to
take you to the airport.

The brochure which a religious fanatic pushes into your hands
makes interesting reading, apparently imploring you to pray to
the god Ralph wherever you smell butterscotch! (Shades of Leary
and Baggett's idea of Duhdha, the monk and the eggs from the
Unnkulian series here.) Another stab at humour which doesn't
quite come off is the airline representative's badge displaying
the name 'Shirley'. (Remember the Airplane films?)

When you reach the village of Hareda in Brazil you learn that the
local Rubber Supplies company has fallen on hard times because a
thief has been stealing the mailbags which contain orders for its
products. The owner, Jose Vargas, isn't much help and the natives
are afraid of entering the labyrinth in the mountain on the other
side of the jungle so it's up to you to sort things out.

You can try to recover the mailbag or pick up every treasure that
you find if you really want to but, in the end, it won't make a
scrap of difference. You only need three particular items to
finish the adventure. There is enough rubber for you to make
immediate use of the machine in the factory to turn one product
into another and thus help solve the problems you come up
against.

The game purports to have a vocabulary of around 800 words but I
do find it frustrating when something pretty obvious is not
recognised. For example:

You're in front of a stone building.

 >examine building

I don't see any building here.

Day, Date and Time have been included as commands although they
appear to be relevant only in catching your plane on time. The
blurb accompanying the adventure also states that Score will give
you an indication of how well you are progressing. However, it
doesn't work and your tally of points remains fixed resolutely on
zero throughout.

Although there are often screens of prose to describe a newspaper
clipping or a journey, the location descriptions are short and
unimaginative. Consequently the game lacks any atmosphere or
sense of "being there" and the player feels that he/she is just
going through the motions in order to finish it, wipe it and
forget it.

There are a couple of mazes, only one of which requires mapping -
the other need not even be entered. But most disappointing of all
is the abrupt ending with your miraculous transfer to the
author's office and a message saying you have finished! A total
non sequitur if ever there was one.

The game started off well, there are some slightly amusing
responses and there's even a bit of role-playing as you attempt
to get the mailbag back from the thief. But there are innumerable
sloppy mistakes in spelling (e.g. exibit, artificats) and the
programming is poor (e.g. no button is shown on the control panel
of the machine in the rubber factory and there is no description
of the manhole and cover in the sand).

Perhaps the author intended to enable a scoring routine, flesh
out the descriptions and end with your return to Boston, laden
with treasures, for a praiseworthy pat on the back from your
boss. Perhaps it is just the result of trying out TADS for the
first time and there are better things to come. Overall, though,
I get the impression that he got fed up with it. In any event
this shareware version is most unlikely to prompt you to register
within the required thirty days. You're more likely to have had
enough after thirty minutes!

As an adventure writing utility becomes more popular and well-
known more people are likely to try their hand at writing with
the result that some games which are poor, mediocre or possibly
only half-finished arrive on the scene. Unfortunately this is
just one of those games. Indiana Jones it ain't!










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