Mel Odious Goes Six-String Searchin'
           (Graphic adventure on SynTax disk 768)

            Reviewed by Charlotte W - On her  PC

It didn't actually occur to me at the time but we're not really
dealing here with a guy with a weird name going out to find six of
your average pieces of cotton string.  Well, that's probably
something to do with me being incredibly stupid at not recognising
that a Guitar has six strings, and that this game would revolve
around an illiterate rock and roll bum who has lost his precious
instrument.  (Obviously.)

It has a brief introduction that warns you that 'It may not be
suitable for more sensitive players', but you have to be the sort
that fears Tony Blair's evil grin to be put off by this.  I didn't
notice anything that made me gasp in shock, and I'd consider
myself to be a bit of a wimp.  It's accompanied by some little
tunes, that annoyingly enough also pipe up every time you enter a
new location in the game itself, but if they bug you that much
there is a sound off option.

The graphics are quite good, but curses to the tasteless person
who chose day-glow green for the main character's outfit.  You can
hardly get lost, since there are less than 30 locations, and about
that many people to talk to, which is rather disappointing looking
at the quality of the artwork there.

It's terribly important for you to retrieve his guitar tonight, as
tomorrow Mel makes his debut performance in front of big bosses, a
big career move.  Unfortunately for him, he is also locked out of
his flat and has nothing but his clothes on him.  To get that
authentic American rock feel, you're treated to language like hey
man, dude, totally rad and awesome, throughout the game, which at
first is irritating, and later, irritating.

You start outside a grey building, with a man to the left and a
building on the right.  Instinctively, I typed TALK TO MAN, and
was given a list of sentences I could say to him.  All pretty
simple so far.  I chose my sentence and typed in the words,
waited, and was quite surprised to see a new screen showing a room
with a red guitar, the one I was looking for.  Maybe he had a
psychic link with his guitar, which he visualised whilst talking
to the man, I thought.  Or maybe not.  It seemed I was watching
the room, and given the chance to type I wrote GET GUITAR.  Music.
Picture of smiley person.  'Well done, you found it!'.  Possibly
the shortest game I had ever played, ended, and sent me back to
DOS.

It was baffling to think I had completed it in three commands, so
I tried again.  This time it didn't hop to the final sequence of
the game, but while I played it on subsequent occasions continued
to jump to other parts of the game.  I could have told my friends
I'd completed a game in less than 10 minutes, but apart from the
fact they wouldn't believe me, I had got no satisfaction from the
game and was determined to complete it without 'cheating'.

You carry up to nine objects, and seeing as there are so few
locations and people, you can hardly describe the puzzles in the
game as even slightly taxing.  This is fine if you've got the
attention span of a toddler, but is just plain annoying if you can
finish it in less than a few days.

During the game you will have to obtain a fake ID to get into the
'Belcher's' pub, the programmers obviously thought that doing
crime was a vital part of rock and roll life and this isn't the
only thing you do lawlessly.

The characters add a barrel of humour to the game, with awful
names like Willie Eversee, the blind man, and Mike Rowfone the
music store manager.  They are also painfully stereotyped, so you
can guess what they're going to say or want from their name and
what they look like.

There are some weird parts in the game, like when the blind man
tells you that you don't even look sixteen, and the fact that
although it's night time, nobody's at home in bed and the music
store is open.

The whole rock-n-roll adventure idea had potential to be good as
it was quite original, but it doesn't do that.  It's not that the
theme's not strong enough, if anything it's too strong, you just
can't get into it before the final sequence.  So what if it's very
small, bug ridden and naff?  Maybe someone out there will like it,
it just wasn't my cup of joe.













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