Ultima Underworld 2: Labyrinth of Worlds - Origin RRP œ39.99 but only œ25.49 from Special Reserve (RPG for PC) Reviewed by James Judge on a 486sx Not having much for my new PC system (well, nothing, actually, apart from Doom and Wolfenstein and a couple of PD games) Sue took pity on me and sent me a couple of games to keep me happy. One was Might And Magic 3 and the other was UU2. Having been accustomed to Dungeon Master type games on the ST I was expecting something very similar, just with better graphics, animation and a larger playing area from both games. You see, I hadn't really kept up with the PC side of RPGs, as I tended to get extremely jealous. I knew that UU2 was meant to be a revolutionary game, but in what respects I did not know. So, after receiving it, I read Sue's letter on her 'wild' MAGIC paper while installing the games. First off was M&M3. During installation I was kept amused by a little character made up of ASCII characters doing a little jive. Then came UU2 and I was disappointed that there was no cabaret so I re-read Sue's letter (trying to cover up the MAGIC letters, and failing miserably). Anyway I loaded UU2 after about 15 minutes of installation where the game took up a whole 13 megabytes. A quick check of my HDD showed that I had nothing to worry about, I still had another 173 megabytes to fill. After a small loading hassle I got it up and running fine, looking at the average introduction - the scrolling was smooth, but the animation was average and the sound-track wasn't anything to write home about. The intro set the scene for the game so, despite its average quality, I watched it a couple of times. What had supposedly happened was that after trouncing (at this point I must say that 'to trounce' is not normally in my vocabulary. I picked it up from the game itself where my Avatar uses such language. God, I'm embarrassed when he does that) the Guardian the land of Britannia was starting a scheme of self-repair. A year after the trouncing Lord British was holding a feast to celebrate the fact that the Guardian was well and truly, erm, trounced (sorry). I was, naturally, invited and the party went ahead. So did the boozing, wenching and a good time was had by all. I went home with a terrible case of triple vision and so the game ended. NO! It was nothing like that, that was just sheer fantasy. Instead midway during the frivolities the sky went dark, thunder roared and lightning flashed (not necessarily in that order). Then a great black jewel formed around Castle British and all the inhabitants were locked in and everyone without was locked out. Lucky old me hadn't decided to take a breath of fresh air so I was lumbered in this blackrock structure. And so the game started. After selecting my character (a male, right handed, black Paladin skilled in the sword and acrobatics) I entered the magical world of Britannia. I started this particular escapade in my room. Funny, I thought, as there was meant to be a party going on. Never mind, may as well go and join the celebrations and so I did, travelling to the main hall and finding that no-one would talk to me as they were all too busy waiting for me to talk to Lord British. So, feeling this was a hint as to what I had to do next, I ran and jumped (I was still getting used to the damn control system) my way into the main hall and accidentally tried to decapitate Lord B. himself. He wasn't a jolly fellow after that and neither was his entourage of guards, not to mention all of the other powerful people in the castle - even the servants laid into me. Waking up in jail Lord B. let me free and then I had a chat with him. He set me the task to relieve Castle British of this blackrock prison so he could get back to the wenching. What I mean is the running of Britannia. So, with these wise words implanted into my brain I dashed around the castle familiarising myself with the layout (although there was a map supplied and the automapping function was great) and chatting to all of the other people I could find. What my investigations led me to was that the blackrock gem was created by the Guardian (thought I trounced him!) and the only way to destroy it would be to find the smaller replica of the giant structure somewhere in the castle and, in some way, destroy it. Easy, me cries, and so I headed towards the sewers, hefting my trusty shortsword, donning my leather armour and cocking my untrusty magic torches (in the end I stuck to conventional ones). Now, to cut a very long story into a long one I finally came across the smaller blackrock gem in just under four hours play. Oh, I thought, I've nearly finished the blasted game. Again I have not met half of the promised monsters, used the spells or progressed from a shortsword. How wrong I was. Here I got stuck well and truly. I did not know what to do - I had destroyed a good many swords trying to destroy the gem and no-one upstairs could give me any clues. Then I had a bright idea. Flicking through the hallowed pages of Red Herring (may its gills rest in peace for ever) I came across Sue's review of this very game. Scanning down it I came to a part where she mentioned ice. I hadn't come across any of that yet so I quickly 'phoned Sidcup and interrupted her tidying up. After taking me around her house, introducing me to the dog (sounds far bigger than a red setter, Sue) and telling me, no, she couldn't help me with Obscure Naturalist we arrived at where she kept all of her magazines. After a few mumblings that 'mum's got the big book' she found a part that might have been useful to me, but wasn't. Then she found something that was and so I slammed down the 'phone without a word of thanks and hurried to load up the game again - it worked! So, now I could transport myself to a different part of the game, a prison tower, which I completed in just under three quarters of an hour. I then went on to, in the next few hours, get another four items that would allow me to progress in the game. Over the next week I progressed further until I am where I'm at now, stuck. Well, almost, I've got one more thing to do before I finally give up and start losing my temper. Hopefully a 'phonecall to Mongoose should help to prevent that but I've still got another 1 hour forty nine minutes left to go until 10 o'clock. (Mongoose, is your 'Troll' your daughter? Hope so or else you have got a very young wife!). So now I am filling my time telling you what I have done. It's not very interesting is it? As a matter of fact you are my sounding board so that, during my prattlings, I may stumble across an answer. That is my poor excuse for not really getting a review done so far. S'pose I'd better start doing it now or you may hit the Esc key. As I was saying, I am (from my estimations) well on the way to completing the game. My character is level 14, I've completed all but two of the parallel dimensions and the room with the blackrock in is shaking something terrible whenever I plop a new item into it. I'm losing it, sorry. I can think of no way in which I can link all of that prattling above to a review. So, what I am going to do is start again, keeping the above and putting two little dashes below this paragraph showing that I'm doing something completely different. -- This is by far the best RPG I have played. I know I have made a lot of noise about Captive and Bloodwych but this is by far above those two. To start with the graphics are top notch. My idea that it would be DMesque was completely wrong, instead it looks more like Doom. For those of you who have never heard of this game the display is first person but like true 3D games you can move anywhere in the gameworld - whether it is just moving a couple of inches forward or running a marathon. You can also rotate a full 360 degrees and look up and down. You can also jump while standing (haven't fond a use for it yet, though) or do a running jump - the faster that you are moving the longer the jump and the more skilled you are in acrobatics the higher the jump will be. Instead of just filled polygons (what you see in games such as Elite and 3DCK games ) you have got a full texture mapped affair. That means that instead of a wall being just one colour what the programmers have done is to construct the game world using these one-coloured polygons and then, using texture mapping process, mapped bitmap images onto the 3D ones. What's a bitmap image? Well, that is the standard image you would get from an art package in which you save it as a BMP (which stands for bitmap, funnily enough), PI? or IFF file. Everything is texture mapped with different kind of flagstones, bricks, planks of wood, marble, a strange gooey substance, swamps - all manner of things. One thing that Sue found odd about the game was the size of the collectables. You are walking down a corridor and you are confronted with a piece of popcorn the size of a sword. To me this didn't make any difference at all, I just accepted it and it hasn't bothered me at all. Anyway, you need these large collectables or you wouldn't be able to see them amongst the old bones, debris and other junk that is lying around the place. The scrolling is smooth and only slows down in one position which is where the mini blackrock structure is. I can understand this, though, as it is a large cavern that is well lit (which means that most of the cavern is showing) there is a large expanse of water (which is animated), there are a number of monsters that are lurking in the water, loads of bats flying around and the blackrock miniature is, itself, pulsating continually. Thankfully it doesn't slow down to unplayable levels, but it does slow noticeably. For those of you with slower, less able machine (he says, caressing his desktop) there is a setting for detail where you can tone down the level of detail to the point where it reminds me of a 3DCK game! In full detail mode, though, 486ers shouldn't feel as if they are moving through treacle and they get both the speed and the graphics out of it. Apart from the actual corridors etc. the monsters and characters are bitmapped objects that are adequately animated. There are all kinds of small additions that needn't have been included with these characters, mainly when they die. Each type of monster has its own way of dying - some explode, some implode, others just clasp their chest and keel forwards, humans are knocked sideways by your blows but the best of all are the cats in the ice world. When you deal the death blow they do a backflip and land, spreadeagled, on their stomachs. It looks very comic and had me laughing when I first saw it. Soundwise the game, too, is faultless. Well, that is if you have got a soundcard. The game recognises all of the major makes so there shouldn't be any compatibility problems in that respect. You get the continual sound of your footsteps during the game which change depending on what you are walking on (snow makes crunching sounds etc.). You also have monster noises, clangs and crashes during combat, different noises for each spells, grunts when monsters die and plenty of other noises. I think you can also have a sound-track playing all the time, but I switched this off, preferring the radio to the constant noise. During the game you get dreams as well when you sleep. I don't they play any part and are just the icing on the cake. In the dreams you get a very good static picture of an occurrence outside in the world of Britannia and then some sampled speech that is pretty lengthy and it sounds very good. Also during the game you may get occasional mocking laughs from the Guardian when you arrive at certain positions. Puzzle-wise the game, again, is faultless from good spatial problems to dexterity tests, mapping tests, spell-casting tests, fighting ones and the logical problems, of course. There are many characters that you will meet in the castle that will be extremely familiar if you have played any of the previous games. I've only dabbled in Ultima 5 but I recognised all but about three of the people in the castle. Controlling the character is no problem. You can use either the mouse, joystick or keyboard or any mixture of three (remember that if you want to use a mouse run a driver or you're lumbered!). Personally I use the old DM trick of moving using the keyboard, leaving my mouse hand to prepare spells etc. If I want to get from A to B very quickly I use the joystick, but that is very rarely. -- This game is brilliant. Great graphics, smooth gameplay, very good sound and a very good feeling of depth. As with Ultima 5 there is a wealth of knowledge to be gained from characters in the game - some of which is completely pointless, but add just that extra pizzazz to the game. This is something that excels this game in front of many others that I have played. From what I've been able to gather this is better than Ultima Underworld 1 - The Stygian Abyss, but I can't wait to get my mitts on that once I have finished this game. I know it may be a retrograde step, but who cares - as long as the playability is there I certainly don't. This is a game that I imagined would never be but I am glad that it has and now with Ultima 8 on the shop shelves things can only get better and the question that I ask is where will the Ultima saga end? Will us Avatars ever defeat the Guardian? If we do will there be something left for us to strive for or will we just be patrolling Britannia teaching schoolkids about the eight virtues? I certainly hope there is plenty left to do in Britannia, what with this extended life that we've got and, man, players will be devastated if Origin stop producing corkers like these. If you've got a 386 or better get this game. It is easy to get into, looks great, plays great and gives you a sense of achievement every time you pass that next obstacle, whether it be killing a monster or retrieving a certain artifact. Thanks for lending it to me, Sue. Now, I've just got another hour to kill before 10. What hall I do now? I know, UU2... STOP PRESS - John 'phoned me just before I was going to turn the computer off for the night. He tried to help, bless him, but he finally said that he couldn't remember much about the game and so wanted to call back in the morning. Sure, I said. What time do you get up? he said. Around seven, I said. OK, he said, I'll phone after then. Woke up Sunday, let the cats out and plodded upstairs looking forward to five minutes peace before I got up properly. Just as I lay my head on my pillow my damn alarm clock went off and, at the exact same moment the 'phone rang. So, managing a quick wake up, turn the blasted beeper off and picking up of the 'phone I still managed to sound as miserable as ever (thanks, John!). After half an hour's worth of chin wagging we figured out that John was of no use at all. None what so ever so I told him to never darken my 'phone again and he gave me MerC's number. In the afternoon 'phoned MerC who did manage to help in the end (thanks) and then I decided to rub more salt into John's wound and so I 'phoned and tormented him for the next hour. One thing did come out of it - we both decided that neither of us know what Dr. Watson is. Everyone who has got a PC look in their Windows directory for an EXE file called DRWATSON. Now, if anyone can tell me what the hell it does I'll give 'em a banana. - o -