Win Adventure 2.1 - Wolfgang Strobl Cow 5: The Great Egg Quest - Bovine Software (Two text adventures on Disk Ref 972) Both adventures reviewed by James Judge on a 486sx These two games came together on an unassumingly green, low density disk with a brief note attached written in the fair script of our beloved editor. "...has two text games, one of which is, literally, the biggest pile of BS about... The other one, WinAdv, is OK." Not a promising start but I was forced to load them up as I didn't have anything else to review that actually ran. We'll start off by looking at WinAdv and then move onto the inspirational Cow 5. WinAdv 2.1 ---------- Hands up all of the readers who have been adventuring for about sixteen to twenty years. Now, keep your hands up. Everybody stick their hands in the air if you've ever played a really old text adventure which you had to wander around a large cave system collecting treasure with a limited parser. This is pre-Infocom, nearly pre-history. Right those two groups keep your hands up. The rest of you (I see there's only three) put your hands up if you've ever played/heard of/smelt/scratched/ingested or even come remotely into contact with an old text adventure called Colossal Cave (also known simply as the Adventure or a lot of other names). Oh, right, there's only one person left out of the readership of SynTax now who doesn't have their hand up and that's Mister- I'm-Rock-'Ard-And-Only-Play-Violent-3D-Surround-Sound- SVGA-Shoot-'em-Ups. No wonder Little-Miss-Text-Adventurer keeps well away from this Neanderthal! So, everyone except Mister-Rock-'Ard can leave the room while I take him through this game which, when it all comes down to it, is yet _ANOTHER_ version of that old, old, old game which undoubtedly plagued mainframes back in the dawn of time, spitting out its output from the clackety daisywheel printers. Yes, ladies and gentlemen (well, not-so-gentleman, actually), this game puts you in the shoes of a hapless adventurer who has nothing better to do with his life other than wander around large holes in the ground looking for treasure and solving a number of puzzles during the course and saying magic words, such as XYZZY (or summat like that, anyway). Colossal Cave was the first real text adventure that had a large following and it was worshipped for a couple of years back then by the first of a new breed - the ones who would later erect shrines to the might of Infocom, perform strange rituals in the name of Level 9 and, even later, come over all clammy at the mere mention of TADS or the Unnkulian world. Now, to be honest, it's just a bit of old tat. There is nothing new to the game and it has been ported across so many platforms, been written in so many languages and played by so many people it really does show its age to the point of creaking with every keypress and giving a very unhealthy cough after every input, depositing a steaming pile of phlegm on the carpet if you ask it to look at a location. No, there's nothing impressive about it at all. Aeons ago, when Mongoose actually had hair, it was quite a good little game which proved to be a real starting point for adventures and we can't fault it for being a vital catalyst. But, getting away from Colossal Cave and onto WinAdv 2.1, we can really start to get cruel. What is the point of yet another remake of this game? Some versions I've seen add things to the game, re-writing locations, adding more puzzles, vamping up the parser etc. However all this version does is put a Windows GUI front end onto this adventure and pray that you'll be fooled into thinking that it's a new, better version. However it's not. The parser is still as dodgy and the locations are nearly word for word from some of the other versions I've seen. The puzzles are the same and... well, there's simply nothing new. As a matter of fact, this game loses all of its appeal when presented in a Windows environment. The romantic image of sitting up late at night with a noisy computer that has a green-screen VDU, a stale doughnut and stone-cold cup of coffee beside you and three days worth of stubble on your chin is completely blown out of the window with this Windows version. If anything, the GUI makes things worse. The game is split into three windows - one for the output, one displaying a truly pointless black and white image of a dragon's head (don't ask me - I didn't write this version!) and the last is for input. The input window is the strangest and the one where all the problems lie. There's the standard text string input line, but the rest of the window is filled with direction buttons for 'easy movement'. Yeah, right. Then there's the inventory button (ooooh) and a little dot. The dot, when pressed, returns the command LOOK. Good innit? A weird thing - in some locations you can't type in LOOK and so have to resort using the dot. TSK! The problem with this window is that it isn't resizeable and always stays on the top. This means that it obscures the lower quarter of the output window and only through changing the font can you ever get to see the whole output window in one shot. A small thing, I know, but it does show a bit of sloppiness over the programming of this version. What else can I say? Well, not much really. To me there is no point what so ever for this version and it's only redeeming feature is that it is public domain, so there is no charge for this granddaddy of an adventure. If you've played Colossal Cave, or one of its many clones, then there is nothing for you here - everything is exactly the same. If you've never played Colossal Cave then maybe, if you're into retro gaming, this version may give you something but I'm sure you can find a better version out there - image is everything and, for me, Colossal Cave in Windows just isn't right, you really do need to have a DOS screen to get the right 'feel' from the game. On the whole pointless and irrelevant. If you've got a fetish for Colossal Cave then get it. Otherwise I think it's better to stick with modern day equivalents - the Unnkulian series (Legend Lives! looks brilliant) and Trinity, for example. They're far more slick and much more fun. Get at your peril. However, the next game may _JUST_ persuade you to buy the disk... Cow 5 - The Great Egg Quest --------------------------- You've been on Uncle Willy's farm for three days now and you've had four adventures already (Cow 1, 2, 3, and 4). Now it's another day and another adventure. Today, boys and girls, you go down into the kitchen and see that Uncle Willy wants you to collect the eggs from the chickens, after feeding them. Hi ho, it's off to work we go! So, off you trot north into the farmyard and take the chicken feed. Now you have a decision to make - do you go west down a path, or do you go into the chicken coup? Well, don't go west!!!!! You'll meet a horrible cow that blocks the road. Oh no! That means you have to go to see the chickens. Upon entering the chicken coup you automatically feed the chickens and scoop up their eggs. A quick dash back to the kitchen and you've won the game. Co-ol!! Sue said this was the biggest pile of BS around and I was really tentative when I loaded it up. However, I must say that this game has proven to be the most satisfying text adventure I've ever played. Yes, I know that in five moves I had completed it. I know the parser was dodgy and only accepted about ten words. I know the descriptions were terse. I know that there was only four rooms and one puzzle. But look on the plus side - it's got cows and chickens and eggs. As the readme document says - this is high speed farm action at its best. The game is Hippoware, which means that if you like the game you must send $10 to your nearest zoo and specifically ask them to put it towards the purchase of a new hippopotamus. A true landmark in adventuring. (Actually it was crap - four rooms, five moves... yes, to say that this is the worst text adventure ever is a bit of an understatement. But if you appreciate the game for what it is (or isn't) - a massive joke then you may get a smile or two out of it. Then again, maybe not. For all I know this may be the Plan Nine From Outer Space of text adventures, but I doubt it somehow....) CONCLUSION ---------- The only redeeming point on this disk is Cow 5, and that's telling you how bad things are getting. Avoid at all costs - save up and get Trinity, or get Legend Lives! for real adventuring. This is purely a kitsch disk to laugh at, throw tomatoes at and to show your mates when you're really stoned. - o -