Lands of Lore - Virgin/Westwood RRP œ35.99-œ39.99
               (RPG for PC on disk or CD-ROM)

          PC CD-ROM version reviewed by Bill Commons

Two months ago I had just bought my first PC computer and I was
anxious to try the new game from the same company that gave us the
Eye of the Beholder series.  I had a few teething troubles at
first, one my mouse pointer would only cover the left hand side of
the screen although the CD was ok on a friend's computer.  I
solved this by loading in a different version of MS DOS, although
a different mouse driver might have been alright. Also when
playing the game I would occasionally get a window pop up saying
unable to find such and such file. This was a bit offputting when
I was engrossed in finding my way through dungeons or caves.
Apart from the odd lock up of my computer these troubles seemed to
go away.

The game is very much in the style of Eye of the Beholder, with
the same fabulous graphics but many changes of scenery ranging
from three sets of woods, several different caverns, dungeons and
catacombs, a town and a castle also three levels of a mine, four
floors of a tower and a swamp.  All of these are very large and
have lots of secret walls and locations to explore.

All the responses are in speech form but I could not always
understand what the people were saying so I used an option to also
have the text displayed. When I saw that they were using words like
'phooey' and 'egads' this was why I couldn't always catch the
words.

The storyline is that a wicked hag named Scotia has decided to
take over the world and has formed a Dark Army to help her, and
you may choose to be one of four champions to represent King
Richard to get rid of her.  The game is very linear and certain
things must be done before going on to the next task. You are
joined on your travels by other characters and it is quite sad
when some leave at different parts of the story.  You have a
choice of fighting normal, ferocious or wimpy monsters and being a
coward I chose wimpy, it was just as well because I was killed
many times and I don't think I could have stood the pace with the
harder creatures.  There are dozens of different types of monsters
and at the end most of them take a bow while the credits are
rolling.

At times I forgot that I had a definite task and was wandering
around wondering what to do next, but at certain locations an
apparition appears to give you some idea. Of course if like me you
are not at that location you can wander about for hours.

There is also an alien scene which was quite a surprise seeing as
how the scene is in the time of dragons and magic, but it fits in
very nicely.

The tension at the end is fantastic and when in her dying breath
Scotia says "you have not seen the end of me" I was very pleased
and can't wait for the sequel.

There is a magic atlas which gives you an automatic map of all the
locations that you have visited and also shows all the secret
walls and switches. While this is a bit of a cheat you could
always make your own maps but I don't think that I would have
found all the locations.  I can recommend this game and I think
that with the new idea of not making it so difficult that a slow
player like can complete it, it is a winning one.














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