THE SUPERHERO LEAGUE OF HOBOKEN - Legend RRP œ35.99
     (Graphic/text adventure cum RPG for PC floppy/CD)

             HD version reviewed by Dave Stone

I never buy full price titles, relying on the all star classics
appearing on budget, second hand finds, or the occasional
commercial flop appearing in a bargain bin. This game was in the
latter category, and although flawed, deserved better.

The plot

New York, 200 years hence, has been largely obliterated by war and
flooding. You must gather your party together to fight evil
mutated creatures and solve evil contrived problems. Each member
has an unusual superpower which may help in combat or with one of
the missions.

Yes, it's combined adventure/RPG time with an early outing for
Legend's appalling ' Put Mount Everest on the sandwich - you are
not holding Mount Everest' interface.  The popular Lucas Arts
front end at least gives a sensible response if you click a
highlighted response, SLH constantly offers a highlighted verb,
then tells you the action cannot be done. I also got fed up with
the 'Clean' option for windows. A well programmed game would have
used the joke once - and then quietly forgotten it.

As you explore, wipe out monsters and complete your missions, you
advance in power, get a bigger party, better weapons and fight
bigger monsters - reasonably well animated in a 2D window. Some of
the early puzzles were too easy - solved by buying a single object
- but the complexity develops and completing missions was quite
satisfying.  My favourite monster was the 'Unrepeatable Bug', (a
common enemy of the commercial programmer).

There are more than 30 'Missions', of varying complexity, the
route to Carnegie Hall having the most original solution (which I
will not divulge here). Unfortunately I was less impressed with
the game design, which involved objects appearing at locations
already visited - this meant that all locations had to be
constantly revisited.  Hint - Map the tube system - You will be
using it a lot!!

Sound & Graphics

I liked the music, and Legend have always been good at sound
effects (but they irritated after a while). The Graphics were not
as good as I expected, lacking detail and atmosphere.

Conclusion

Although unlikely to satisfy hardened fans of RPGs (the combat is
not too challenging), I found it both frustrating and enjoyable
(and I intricately explained the solution to one of the puzzles to
my wife to demonstrate why I had been forced to stay up to 3am).

Overall - 65%

Tech Note - 386DX40 - 4MB. (Min spec 386-20)

Installation - Easy, slow running due to disk access for every
               text message - it could have been programmed
               to use available EMS memory.

@~I recently played the CD version - which I could only get
@~from the States on import - and found it excellent. I agree
@~with Dave that it is annoying how objects turn up in previously
@~visited locations. The CD version has some speech, acted in very
@~hammy tongue-in-cheek style, very appropriate considering
@~the plot ... Sue









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