The Haunted House - Jonathan Cutts (AGT text adventure, part of Disk 1141) Reviewed by James Judge on a P120 Welcome one and welcome all, to my new spot in SynTax - the requests hour. Oh yes, dear reader, for today's program we invite you to 'phone in with your dedications and I'll 'play' them live on air being sarcastic, vindictive and down-right scathing to one and all. Naturally I'll give 'em a chance, but as I only like one game then what chance do they stand? Eh? Eh? Ay? Isn't it? Well, to be honest it isn't. Here I am, at ten thirty in the evening a little tired and very bored - I've just finished my last Terry Pratchett book and have nothing else to read (apart from the cornflake packet, again), I've broken two strings on the guitar so can only play Merrily We Roll Along out of key and my CD-ROM is playing up meaning I can't go get violent in Carmageddon. Re-arranging the mess on my floor into less orderly piles lost my interest about five minutes ago and the cat has just slunk off after trying to attack my feet. I've just managed to lever off another key from my keyboard (the "point" button on the numerical pad for anyone interested) which means that I now have two black, gaping holes on my keyboard (and no, I still haven't removed the F4 key from my forehead. The adhesive quality of my dribble is truly amazing. I think I'll jar it up and sell it as the eco-friendly alternative to Super-Glue and the name? Spit'N'Stick) and seeing how many walls I can get the top of a deodorant spray to ricochet from is proving more dangerous by the minute. So, what am I left with? Well, I can write an early letter to Santa just informing him that this year I am being a good boy or there's... gulp... or there's.... gag... or there's... hurrumph. Oh all right then the only thing that there is to do around here is play The Haunted House. As a Terry P. (minor) character would say in this situation... Buggrit. Well, what's the story behind me getting my sweating paws on THH? It seems that my 'negative' reviews have achieved a certain cult status similar to that of Quentin Tarantino movies. I can now enter any restaurant in the Western world, click my fingers and get a premier table. If the waiter annoys me a simple "Pah!" will have him taken outside and shot. If the mea.... well, no, actually it's nothing like that. In actuality Bev just wants me to write some reviews of these games. As she put it in an E-Mail to Sue... "Sue, you simply HAVE to send Haunted House and Electrabot to James Judge for him to review! I know the poor kid who wrote Haunted House is only 12, but still... And Electrabot, presumably written by an adult judging by the language, is hardly any better. Tell James he'll have a fun time playing them, and he can do a couple of his famously scathing reviews on them both". Not quite the restaurant scenario, I'll grant you, but one day.... Not planning on entering the game with too negative an attitude I threw on some cool music, loaded up the computer and copied the games over to my HDD. A couple of clicks later and I'm told: "WARNING: DO NOT PLAY ALONE IN A DARK ROOM. HA, HA, HA, HAAAAA!" Being ever the rebellious type I leaned over and flicked off my table lamp. I'll show you "HA, HA, HA, HAAAAA!", even without a violent asthma attack. The intro screen then flicked up and, joy of joys, it's an AGT adventure. Not only that it's one written in AGT Big which, from my experience, means large and empty adventures that take ages to complete and have a hundred and one monster in it to kill with two thousand and three weapons. Whoopee!! I quickly learn that this is a Beta version of game that will soon be uploaded in its entirety for free. Which isn't a "Good Thing" (TM). You see, THH is written by a twelve year old kid. But this isn't any old twelve year old kid. This is one who has done some programming in BASIC and has an Internet connection. It also seems that this kid (we'll call him Jonathan, because that's what his name is) has had a good day at school. Not only did he survive the sound drubbing the school bullies would surely have given him, but his English teacher probably gave him a good comment at the bottom of his "Write a scary story" holiday assignment. Probably something along the lines of "Good work, Jon, you used some scary words well...". The problem with this is that, as with teachers world wide, you rarely get a teacher that is honest enough to be honest. Instead they'll find a way to be critical in a very constructive way. Instead of "hey kid, give it up - you'll never be any good at this anyway and what good does writing scary stories do you in the real world, eh?" you get some smarmy comment invariably followed by either a really big tick or a smiley happy face, if the teacher is trying to be even more diplomatic and has artistic leanings. Anyway, Jon's had a good day at school and has come home on a high. He wants to write, he has been inspired. He has a vision. A vision of a dark, terrifying, dank, ooze-encrusted world where anything can happen, but usually involving spine- tingling voodoo rites and a lot of messy impalings (but nothing too terrifying that it ends up in classification limbo). He's seen Nightmare On Elm Street. He's read the Dracula comic. He's told stories to his younger cousins that have left their parents wondering why they won't go to bed without pacing around their rooms chanting "Jonny's a God" backwards as a form of protection ritual. But above all, he has written something at school that was scary. He's also just started to look at a highly complex programming language called AGT that lets him write interactive stories. Given these to facts Jon has reached a cusp in his youthful life. Does he go outside and see how long an ant's head takes to explode when under a magnifying glass like the rest of his friends, or does he stay in, night after night, like a manic genius carefully constructing a world that is so dire and scary that even his English teacher won't be able to play it in a dark room? Unfortunately for me he chooses the latter. Once again... Buggrit. THH has fifteen rooms. It has three objects. It has two puzzles. IT HAS A LOT OF WORDS IN CAPITAL LETTERS TO ADD TENSION. Given all these facts it can't fail to be a classic. Just as Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings failed to be a classic, as did Dungeon Master on the Atari, not to mention that painting called the Mona Lisa - you can't call any of them classics, compared to this game. Oh, no sir! A classic in the sense of... "This game is a classic example of what should never be allowed to grace the screens of anyone's computer - whether they are a foolhardy reviewer doing a request spot, or some innocent who hasn't the benefit of years of playing games of this ilk, creating their own 'tosh filters' which let them survive the encounter relatively unscathed". Oh, a classic it is indeed, just like Eldorado (defunct and much maligned British soap set n Spain, for the non-British (or younger) readers out there) and Arena: Elder Scrolls. For once I find myself in the odious position of not being able to mention any specifics in the game, as it would instantly SPOIL YOUR ENJOYMENT of the game, if you do ever decide to purchase it. Not that you would. Because you respect my integrity as a reviewer, don't you? Oh yes, I control your opinion, and therefore your wallet. Oh yes, through this insidious amount of control I do, in fact, rule the world, but that is neither here nor there and is something for my analyst to address at a future session... So, instead of looking at any specifics in the game, I'll just let you glean my overall opinion from the following sentence of disjointed words, which you can re-arrange at your own leisure (or use as a fun party game!!). EVEN. TOSH. PILE. RUBBISH. IT. SOPORIFIC. SIMPLE. BORING. IS. MORONIC. A. ARCHAIC. OF. NONSENSE. OR. Please note my use of capitals in that sentence. I hope it made you feel tense and edgy. So that's it. My request spot done for this time. If anyone else wants to torture me, please feel free to make suggestions as to which games I should review, or even send them direct to me. My address is somewhere in this issue of SynTax. I'll be delighted. No, really I will. Just a little apology to Bev, who made this suggestion months ago, but what with one thing and another (not to mention sheer laziness) I've only just gotten around to doing this. Thanks again, Bev, you've made my life so much more, erm, worthwhile? @~James will look at Electrabot NEXT (oops, sorry, didn't mean to @~scare you!) issue ... Sue - o -