@~Two AGT reviews again this issue - and Steve Clay wanders @~through the Tomb of the Ancient Pharaohs and James Jillians @~finds himself in Ducksoup. ------------------------------------------------------------------ TOMB OF THE ANCIENT PHARAOHS (On PC (PD 351), ST (PD 350), Amiga (PD 421)) Reviewed by Steve Clay on the Amiga You begin this adventure as a tourist in Egypt taking a shufty at the land of the Pharaohs. As you explore the splendid ruins and impressive sights you become separated from the rest of your party and find yourself alone on a path. Spotting something shiny in the grass at the side of the path you find a ring. It is a bit dirty so you give the ring a rub and things start to happen. First off is the ground giving way and you slipping downwards, secondly, you manage to pull a shrub out of the ground and thirdly you drop the flipping ring. You fall and end up in some dank cellar all alone with the aim of escaping your ancient Egyptian prison and rejoining your party. Written with AGT what strikes you first about Tomb is that all the text is in upper case and this, to me, gives the game a very untidy appearance. I can't see any reason behind this unless it was to try to make the game look a little different or perhaps the author doesn't like messing around getting all her text looking right and correcting those typos that always occur. So, no marks for presentation, how about the game? The storyline behind the game is not the strongest in the world but there have been worse reasons for playing an adventure. Once into the game I gained the impression that this was a throwback to the early days of adventuring and the author has included lots of traditional puzzles along with a hundred and one ways to trap yourself, kill yourself or teleport yourself to locations where exit is impossible. There are plenty of objects to find and use and have stolen by a Nobbler who will return certain items of your inventory to the foyer near the start of the game. This becomes a real pain in the bott after a couple of encounters. But the pain suffered in my nether regions when compared with the misery a certain Gallinipper causes, pales into insignificance. The Gallinipper appears after approx every ten moves and each time it appears you have to SWAT IT WITH SWATTER and then you get a message on how you swat it, but don't worry, its name must be Arnie because he'll be back. The creatures included in the game include giant spiders, ghekos (I have a feeling I've spelt that wrong. Yep! It's spelt gecko!), crocodiles and of course the Gallinipper. Other more unusual residents include the Humgruffin and the Gillygalloo. There is a feeling of days gone by with this game it has many of the features that early adventures are (in)famous for. There are several typing errors or maybe formatting errors such as 'There is an object (in the WAT)'. Other messy occurrences are items in your inventory that are still described as lying on the floor or similar. This maybe AGT at fault but there must be a way around such things? I feel the game offers a lot of promise and for those with longer memories of adventuring this may well be a game for you. Lots of things to try and lots of things to collect. A bit of a curio really and that could be its biggest plus point. ------------------------------------------------------------------ DUCKSOUP - author C. Evans (On SynTax PD 681 (PC) and PD 705 (ST)) Reviewed by James Jillians Computer adventuring has been going on so long now that you can find games on almost any topic you like. It must be a hard struggle for an author/programmer to find something vaguely original to set his or her game apart from the crowd. At the expense of his dignity, C. Evans has solved this problem by writing a game about rubber ducks. Fortunately, you do not play the part of a duck. You are a human being. In particular, you are the human being called Burke - Private Investigator Burke, and you are the finest private detective in town. One day you arrive home in your Porsche, and after a brief kerfuffle trying to find your house keys, you let yourself into your apartment. You have nothing better to do, so you make a start on a few overdue household chores - tidying away misplaced possessions, feeding your dog, shovelling its poop off your roof and finding those car keys which seem to have already slipped between the cushions of the sofa. Suddenly, you are interrupted by the sound of someone ringing your doorbell. Opening the door, you are greeted by the sight of a beautiful woman who seems very anxious and distressed. Excitedly you usher this potential client in and whip out your detective's notebook. The lady tells you that her name is Miss Flood and she wants you to find something important that has disappeared. She will pay you $1000 if you can perform this task in a week. The object of the search is a rubber duck, alias Dimples, last seen floating in the lady's bath. $1000 a week is big bucks even for you so you eagerly accept. Thus begins the hunt for the lost duck. Technically, Ducksoup is a perfectly ordinary graphic-free AGT adventure. It is one of the best I have played, although that is not saying much with classics like 'Deadly Labyrinth' and 'TimeSquared' under my belt. Needless to say, ordinary VERB-NOUN inputs with the occasionally more complex instruction are required, and compass directions are used for movement. The game is obsessed with ducks. Not real ones mind you, but plastic yellow ones of all shapes and sizes. The game is relatively small with only 25 locations (the text says there are 36, but I've no idea where the others are). There are four main locations: your house and garage, the local shops, Vasona Park and Flood's cottage. The non-stop action involves zooming around in your Porsche, clambering down manholes, participating in the world-famous Vasona Creek rubber duck race, going shopping and dying in all manner of ways, sometimes with the help of your ever-obedient dog, Pansy (well, after she's been trained anyway). A trail of puzzles needs to be solved, and your efforts are normally rewarded with the discovery of a rubber duck of some sort. Some of the puzzles are fairly easy but others had me completely stumped. Yes - as usual I had to look at the solution to finish the game. The puzzles are not always object related - some involve typing in the right instruction at the right time or ASKing characters in the game about objects or places. All are original, logical and duck saturated. Ducksoup comes with all the annoying limitations of other AGT games. The computer resets every time you come to a sticky end, and takes an aggravatingly long time to re-load. No effort has been made to rectify this situation (as opposed to 'The Test' where a multiple lives system was included). After half a dozen times it takes more than the mention of a few ducks to stop you switching off in anger. The parser is frankly poor, and this really stands out after you've been playing commercial software from the likes of Level 9 or Magnetic Scrolls. Objects with two words in their name, like GLOVE BOX or POOPER SCOOPER can only be manipulated using the second word, ie, GET SCOOPER. There are few alternatives to required commands, for instance, you cannot GET IN CAR or OPEN CAR, you can only ENTER CAR. Once you get used to using very basic commands, when a more complex one is needed for solving a puzzle you don't think to use it! There are a few bugs - messages appearing at the wrong time and so on; these are mildly annoying but not fatal. As usual, AGT does not allow the computer to put a message up during a turn without disregarding your last instruction. The author is clearly not an expert writer - there are spelling mistakes and some bad English - but the the text is nevertheless imaginative, entertaining and often surprising. The game is humorous (how could a game about rubber ducks not be?) and even has a few jokes that don't involve things that go "quack". Despite the annoyances (including the ducks after a while), the game is a fairly good text-adventure. It manages to be both entertaining and challenging. It is just long enough to fall short of tedium - a snack-size bite of quality adventuring. If you don't mind a touch of absurdity, even surrealism, in your adventures (we ARE all mad, aren't we?), then I suggest you try it. FUN FACTOR : 6.5/10 QUACK FACTOR : 10/10 - o -