THE PILOT by The Adventure Game Jockey (c)1989
   A Text Adventure on disk 458(PC) / 77(ST) / 494(Amiga)

                    Review by Bev Truter

First off, the title of this game bears almost no relation to its
content. Granted, you DO play the role of a pilot, but you are
only in the cockpit of your plane for a short time before escaping
to an area more appropriate to fantasy games than the title
suggests. If you were after a flight simulation or strategy game,
or even a macho game involving aeroplanes and flying them, forget
it. Oops.  I've just had another look at the full title of this
game, and it's actually called `The Pilot - or A Flight into
Fantasy'. So my apologies to the author, the full title is more
appropriate than the shortened `Pilot'.

In this oddball adventure with a storyline meandering off at all
sorts of tangents you play the role of a test pilot, and the game
begins with you in the seat of an F-16 jet, nosediving straight
towards earth. Can you escape the inevitable crash in time? Will
you ever find your way back to the world you once knew? Do you
care enough to continue playing? Once you've escaped from your jet
and its suicidal plunge downwards you wake up in very different
surroundings - a large ice cave, to be exact.

The middle part of this adventure takes place in these chilly
caverns, and if you don't put on a burst of speed here you'll
rapidly freeze to death. So for this section you face the
uninviting prospect of finding out what you have to do while
frequently dying of cold and getting thrown back to the desktop.
It will take several restarts to figure out what to do, and a few
more RESTORE commands to accomplish everything quickly enough to
avoid meeting a chilly end. There's a stalagmite here in one ice
cave, overlooking a precipice with a tiny ledge ... pity you
haven't got a length of rope though. A bit further into the game
you'll need to find a light source, but it looks like the
flashlight's batteries are frozen solid. Ah, problems, problems;
but then a test pilot's life wasn't meant to be easy.


After finding a way out of this area and through a locked gate the
climate improves considerably, as does the scenery. Defying all
logic, you stumble into an abandoned theatre, and who knows what
lurks below the stage in a series of tunnels leading off the
orchestra pit? Again defying all logic, what lurks here is
actually a coffin and a casket, and their contents provide a
rather thought-provoking little puzzle. If you can find a way to
get through yet another locked door you'll reach the endgame
location, and a quite unexpected ending. You'll either find the
ending a let-down, or it might have you muttering "Oh! Of
COURSE ...".  Personally, I felt the game could have continued on
from there to a more satisfying conclusion, but at least there's
some surprise in it ending this way.

The PILOT.TXT file claims that this game is shareware, and that it
is not the complete version - i.e. if you want the complete
version, send $10 to the author. But you can happily ignore this
warning as this version from the SynTax library is definitely
finishable (200/200 points). I doubt you'd suffer any pangs of
guilt over non-payment either, as The Pilot is simply not
entertaining enough to send you scuttling off for $10 to send to
the U.S.A. Come to think of it, one of the minor bugs I found
might have been an attempt by the author to make the game
unfinishable; but when I decompiled Pilot to check what the
problem was I discovered the answer, and just assumed it was
sloppy programming on the author's part. (To solve one problem you
have to be able to enter 4 similar rooms, and in the .CMD file
there's a command which only allows you to enter 3 of them, so you
can't get the necessary information from the 4th room).

It's difficult to get into the mood of this game, as you are
thrust into a seemingly unconnected (by logic!) series of
locations - first the cockpit of your jet, then an area of ice
caves, then a few passages and rooms containing various buttons,
levers, keypads, gates and doors; and finally the old theatre.
There is no reasonable explanation as to why all the contrived
puzzles, events and situations exist, and this sense of unreality
persists right to the end. The aim seems merely to struggle around
the scenery and overcome various obstacles and problems, until you

can find a way of escaping to the everyday world and `normal'
surroundings.

The location descriptions are not particularly interesting, and as
a result there's not much in the way of atmosphere in Pilot.
Another criticism is that sprinkled about the game in the form of
object descriptions are a few ancient old jokes of the boring
variety - eg, in the Party Room you see some red noses, and a sign
telling you to "pick a nose". Try "pick nose", and you get a
childish rant on learning to behave better in public. Ooh-aah!!
What a hoot THAT was!!

Pilot was yet another fairly ordinary AGT text adventure, but at
least it contains enough silliness and quirkiness to keep your
interest from flagging. A few puzzles were difficult to solve only
because of errors in programming, which meant restoring a saved
game and keeping fingers crossed that this time the parser
wouldn't throw a tantrum. Because of its size - only 48 locations
and a total score of 200 - I kept on plodding away until I'd
finished it. Any larger and I wouldn't have bothered, as Pilot is
just not good enough to invest a lot of time or effort in.
However, if you're in the mood for tackling a smallish text
adventure with only a few minor bugs and spelling errors, and some
pathetic puns, you could do worse than playing The Pilot.

   ATMOSPHERE       3.5/10
   ENJOYMENT          4/10
   DIFFICULTY       4.5/10
   FINAL COMMENT    More `plod' than `adventure'.










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