Ripley's Believe it or Not:Riddle of Master Lu
                 Sanctuary Woods RRP œ39.95

                      An update by Sue

As you know, Alan reviewed this graphic adventure in January's
issue. I wheedled my way in and started playing it once he had
hung up his reviewer's hat for another year. Having finished the
game, with many phonecalls back and forth to Lol Oakes who was
also playing it, I thought I'd give you my views on the whole
game.  To briefly refresh your memory about the storyline, Ripley
is involved in an attempt to get hold of the Emperor's Seal.
Actually, he is trying to beat the bad guys to it, and his
adventures take him over various parts of the globe - Peiping,
Danzig, Peru, Easter Island, Sikkim in the Himalayas and the
ancient settlement of Mocha Moche, and finally to the tomb.

Visually the game can't be faulted; the graphics are excellent.
Ripley and other characters are superimposed on drawn backgrounds.
All of these are very detailed, especially some of those in the
tomb where Ripley comes across terracotta soldiers in various
colours, all very detailed. The animation is good too and all the
speech clear though the acting is a tad hammy in places. Ripley
ain't the brightest character about, and this is made very clear
in the script.

Puzzlewise you won't be disappointed though the game takes a while
to get going. The fact is that though there aren't a large number
of puzzles, those which are there are, by and large, quite
intricate. The Baron's secret lab is a prime example, obviously
thought up by a twisted mind, it makes the HHGTTG babel fish
puzzle look simple.  Goodness knows THAT took me long enough. I
allowed Alan to help me with that bit because it was mechanical in
nature and he got quite hooked. Another neat puzzle involves
monks and prayer wheels; more cerebral than mechanical.

Other so-called puzzles are just a waste of space. The blurb on
the box mentions over 200 locations if I remember correctly. The
majority of these locations are a huge and utterly pointless maze.
There are only three places of interest in it to visit, dotted at
the far ends of the map, so you have to trudge right through it.
Add to this the fact that the rooms are dark until a rope has been
pulled in the preceding room (unless you can't go that way, in
which case the light doesn't go on), multiply all this tedious
rope-pulling by umpteen rooms and it adds up to a heap of
frustration. There is another middling size maze of sorts on
Easter Island. So location-wise, you can ignore the large figure
quoted on the box.  This isn't really a large game.

Far more damning, though, is a really bad bug which stops you
completing the game. Lol and I both got annoyed by this "100 room"
bug which seems to kick in once you have visited 100 rooms and
crashes the game when you enter a new location. Lol discovered
that replaying from a previous save and not saving up to that
point sometimes fixed the problem - he was more patient than me,
especially when he got to the stage of replaying from before the
massive maze. Fortunately the patch disk fixes it, but I know The 
Grue, for one, has hit other bugs, despite the patch disk.


Sanctuary Woods seem to be a competent programming team, maybe
pushing back the frontiers a bit too swiftly so that 'undocumented
features' are more likely to crop up. They are certainly into well
designed and visually appealing games and despite some annoyances
with Master Lu, I am looking forward to seeing the second Ripley
game which is evidently on its way.













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