Great Ultizurkian Underworld - Author The Mach Gryphon
                  (PC RPG on Disk Ref 882)

                  Reviewed by James Judge

Hi ho, slag off time yet again, doesn't it come along quickly
these days?  You've just finished slagging off your last game,
snaffled the last of the turkey sandwiches and giving a
gut-wrenching belch when you've got to start preparing yourself
for another slag-off session. Oh, the pain...

Anyway what's this game all about then? Well, I don't actually
know. That's the honest truth. This may be due to lack of playing,
utter boredom and resorting to balancing a roll of Sellotape upon
my bonce while yawning at this game, but there are a few other
reasons.

First off the version I was playing was the shareware version and
this means I can only look at four levels of the complete game
(thank God). I managed to get into the third level before I was
struck dead with boredom and my character was struck dead with an
axe. The second is that neither you nor anyone around you seem to
know what the problem is. The readme file assures you that there
definitely IS a problem, but no-one knows what it is. Now, is it
just me or does that make no sense what-so-ever? There is
definitely a problem, no-one knows what it is and no-one knows
what the problem is doing, let alone how to cure it.

Well, the biggest problem I can see is the game. It starts with
the readme.txt cum manual. The spelling etc. is fine, it's just
the way that it opens in an over-cheery, self-pompous way. You
know, instead of using full stops it uses exclamation marks! It
also tells you how great it is! How you can "marvel as you open
and close doors"! Oh God, I'm just soooooo sexy! Yes, I'm a good
looking Mel Gibson/Brad Pitt/Tom Cruise/Sean Connery/Jack
Nicholson (delete where appropriate)! I move in a realistic
fashion! Wonder at my graphics!

Erm, sorry about that, on with the slating...

It makes loads and loads of claims like how you can wonder as you
open and close doors, marvel as chests realistically sound as they
open and close, how the NPCs and monsters move in a realistic
fashion and look so life-like, how there is a truly awesome
day-night cycle and so it goes on and on all in wonderful
exclamation mark 'look at mine, isn't it big' fashion.

Well, all you need to do is load up the game to see that all of
this self proclamation is a whole crock of brown stuff (yup,
melted chocolate but minus the chocolate).

Let's forget what the game's about - I don't know and I doubt
whether the author does. Instead let's look at the way the game
plays. First off the doors (sorry, but I can't resist this...).

Doors open and close. Wow, I can do that at home and in 101 other
games and in a far better way. Upon opening the door all the
action freezes and your internal speaker sounds as if it is
shorting out. Oh the pain!

Now to how realistically chests pop open and close. Well, a two
frame animation showing a chest closed and then, after another
tortuous screech from your internal speaker, you can see it open.
Now stop fainting in abject wonder and throwing yourself on the
ground shouting 'we are not worthy', it gets better...

The realistic movement. Hohohohohoho, if aimless wandering up and
down a corridor or around in circles is realistic (oh, and
suddenly shouting out to no-one in particular "may I speak") then
I've missed something in life, but never mind, the blurb was
probably talking about the wonderful graphics.

Wonderful, ha, my left big toe! When anyone moves down the screen
their graphic reminds me of one of those wind-up toys I had when I
was a kid. You know, the one which walk along with their feet
together, raising one foot and then another.  But the movement
from left to right is the best. Here we see something never before
witnessed by man - a moon walk but going forward! Both feet flat
on the ground, both legs rock-solid straight, but one leg a couple

of feet away from the body. No matter how hard I try I can't do it
(and don't blame me if you injure yourself trying...).

The text surely must have been stolen from another game. But
somehow I don't think it could have been - very few games I have
come across have been so pompous ...

Anyway, anything else about the game that's worth mentioning?
Well, the view is a bird's-eye view with forced 3D (ie you can see
both the top and bottom of all the walls at the same angle which
just isn't possible) and you see all the people in icon two-frame
format.

On the first two levels you can wander around talking to people.
Like early Ultima games you talk to them and then can type in one
word to try and get a response from them. The starting two are
NAME and JOB and then any further important words are highlighted
in red. This only works properly for a few of the many characters
you come across - the rest just say 'Ah lord, I'm too thick to

know anything, but say hi to Gwen on level 2 for me'. Obviously
the programmer based this response on himself, how kind...

In the chests (which pop open realistically) you can find lots of
interesting food like dead ducks and deadly nightshade (hmmmmmmn)
as well as the odd piece of armour and a weapon or two.
Unfortunately you can only put one item in each chest so if you
stumble across a stash of food you have to open about 20 of the
blighters (which takes a hell of a long time as the game slows
every time you pop a chest). Not only that you can't look into
them to discover their contents - you must pick it up, go to the
inventory, examine it and if you don't want it drop it. That's
another thing, you can only drop things in chests ... funny that.

Unlike many other games of this ilk you can already see your
surroundings and, so, can see monsters and characters that may be
corridors away. This removes any sense of impending doom.

Finally (I don't want to be too nasty to the game, after all, so
I'll have to stop somewhere) the game runs at a strange speed.
Don't move and everything zips along at a fair speed - to fast in
fact. Start moving or executing an action and the game slows to
the speed of Ultima Underworld 2 played on highest resolution with
a 386SX 8Mhz. Yup, it's painfully slow. But have no fear, there
are options to configure the speed of the game. There are three
values. One to control the overall speed of the game (which is
useless because if you slow it down all your actions slow down
even further, speed it up and fighting becomes impossible), one to
control the speed of the scenery (???????) and one to control the
speed of the pendulums of clocks you come across. For crying out
loud who cares whether the clocks tick correctly - THE GAME
DOESN'T PLAY PROPERLY ITSELF, SO WHY THE HELL SHOULD WE WORRY
ABOUT WHETHER A DAMNED CLOCK TICKS TOO FAST OR TOO
SLOWLY????????????? (And it doesn't affect game time either...).

Oh, one last thing, this day night thing. I never knew you could
have day and night underground but the way it is handled in this
underground adventure is poor. One moment you can see everything
fine and then everything is plunged into darkness - you can't even
read your player's statistics properly as the colour of the font
has been changed to a very dark blue on a black screen...  there's
not even an option to sleep through the night so you have to put
up with half the game being played with your nose pressed against
the screen.

How can I sum up this game without swearing from the rooftops? I
don't know, so if you don't like swearing read another review now:

Blasted game doesn't bring a blinking thing to the damned genre
and the bloomin' author should be put down with his accursed game
that has had the dashing gall to make its presence known to my
computer. Dash it!







                              - o -