Gateway II:Homeworld - Legend RRP œ34.99 (Text/graphic adventure for PC) Reviewed by Sue Following the successful conclusion of your adventures in Gateway, you are now living a life of luxury in a snazzy penthouse flat in San Francisco. The enormous bonus of $50 million you earned on your final mission as a Gateway prospector has been well invested. Still, you deserved it, having been the person responsible for foiling the plans of an alien race known as The Assassins. If you hadn't activated four shields which had been put in place by another race known as the Heechee, mankind would have been extinct by now, wiped out by the homicidal Assassins who delight in eradicating complete civilisations. The Heechee, in a last-minute panic, had chickened out of activating the shields and vanished to ... who knows where ... leaving behind a legacy of strange artifacts and faster-than-light spacecraft on Gateway. Adventurous (or desperate) individuals have been using these to explore far-flung planets, sometimes finding great reward, as you did, but sometimes going on what could only be described as a one-way suicide mission. A few weeks before the start of the game, on July 25th 2112, something was noticed on the deep space sensors, an object making a faster-than-light jump through Tau space. When it appeared, near to Pluto, everyone was astounded. It appeared to be a space craft! Silently, it waited, ignoring all efforts at communication. The population of Earth went into a panic; The UN entered emergency session. Was anyone on the ship? The Heechee? Or, , the Assassins? You remain, unconcerned, in your apartment. It isn't your problem. But, it soon will be, for a message comes through on your PV console. An ambassador is being sent to the craft, known as the Artifact. However, there's a drawback. A cult known as the Phoenix Sect, who worship the Assassins, have killed the first choice for ambassador so, with someone filling in at short notice, you, with your knowledge of all things Heechee and Assassin, are asked to brief him. You can probably guess that things won't be THAT simple! No sooner has the message finished than another comes through ... a Sect hit squad is on its way to your building to kill you. The elevators are already disabled as are the outward circuits of your PV. It's a race against time to reach the roof and the aircar which is being sent to take you to the briefing before the Sect carries out its mission. That problem solved (not difficult), you reach a Research Centre in San Francisco and start to learn of the ship, the Aquila, which is taking the ambassador on a four month trip to the Artifact. Suddenly - bam! The Phoenix Sect turn up again! Persistent, aren't they? There's a gas attack on the centre and you narrowly escape assassination by a Sect member. You run for your life! It won't take much imagination to work out that YOU are the one who ends up on the ship, heading for the Artifact. Once there, your adventures are only just beginning as, when you approach it, tractor beams grab your ship and pull it towards it. Whereas the first game in this series had you travelling between worlds, you will do less physical travelling in Gateway II. However, the Artifact turns out to have several habitats, or zoos, within it and working your way through these will feel very similar to visiting different planets. You will later fly to a planet inhabited by Kords, strange crystalline creature who can 'bud' objects. This was my favourite section of the game as I found the Kords a very engaging race, especially the oldest Kord who only really livens up when telling you a long story, telepathically. I won't say much more about the storyline except to draw your name to the title, Homeworld, so as you can imagine, you'll finally get to meet the Heechee in one section of the adventure. One other thing you'll probably guess is that The Phoenix Sect will play a large part and you will have to foil their plans more than once before the game is ended. A minimum 286 is required with VGA upwards and the game takes about 8 meg hard disk space. Once again, a hint book is supplied; I wish they wouldn't do that! The screen display is very similar to the first Gateway adventure. There's an optional menu if you would rather click on the verb/noun of your choice rather than type them in. A small graphic window can be alternated with an on-screen map but this shows such a small area it's pretty useless. I tended to keep the graphic window up and disable the menu system, using the bottom half of the screen for the text window. As in earlier Legend games, there are occasions when a graphic interface is used - operating your ship controls, using a keypad on a door etc. When playing Gateway II, I started off by enjoying it immensely and enthused about it to anyone who rang up. But after a while, it started to pall. For one thing, the game is just too easy (which is not to say I didn't get stuck a few times!). Even without using the on-screen map, there is no need to map the game as each section is small enough to find your way around without getting lost. Points are thrown at you for doing virtually nothing. See something lying on the ground - pick it up - 5 points. Someone leaves your location - have another 15 points. If you're slow picking something up, the game will make you collect it automatically before leaving the location ... and STILL give you the points. Go on, have 10 points for almost missing something. Gee, thanks. When about to take off in my ship for the Artifact, I was presented with screens of instructions for launching and flying the ship - what altitude to go to - when to calibrate the autonav systems and ignite the fusion pulse drive - how many orbits to allow before departing for the Artifact - I painstakingly wrote all these down in my atrocious handwriting and what happened? Yes, the game went into hands-off mode once the ship took off, I entered cryosleep and four months later my ship gets pulled to the Artifact, all without my touching a key. Damn. There are a few bugs though not as many as in the original Gateway where some of us found we could duplicate objects. The bugs here are minor ones - two words being joined together, a message being repeated, that sort of thing. The graphics, however, are excellent ... not just the graphic window but the cut scenes too. There is also some very good animation, nice and smooth. And, for the first time, I didn't disable the music. However, a game doesn't get good ratings through graphics and music, it's the puzzles that are important and Gateway II, sadly, falls down in that department. The game, by being divided into sections and, in the case of the zoos on the Artifact, sub-sections, which must be travelled through one by one, is very linear. The storyline isn't as good as the first game either and the ending is a bit of a let-down. But I DID like the Kords! - o -