The Great Ultizurkian Underworld
                    (On Disk 882 for PC)

                  Reviewed by Graham Raven

I found Ultizurk to be quite a mixture, both good and bad, though
with the emphasis on the good!. The game has a lot going for it,
good background and enough depth to get your teeth into without
being an epic saga. All boded well until I came to actually play
the game. For a start you will spend an awful lot of your time
trying to pin down other characters, who appear to move
significantly faster than you do and usually in a totally random
direction, in order to speak with them. You really do need to
speak to everyone in this game and I enjoyed the chit-chat once
I managed to stop someone long enough to actually talk to them.
Slightly better control over your characters' movements would make
the game much more enjoyable.

Apparently there is a way of slowing the game down just in case
you're using one of those modern ultra fast 486 computers, but
I've yet to work out how you do it. (yes, I do know that an idiot
can do this, so if an idiot would like to apply for the job I'd be
very grateful!) Also, just where do you find a weapon and some
armour?  Yes, I did find a weapon and some armour eventually. I
suppose I was in too much of a rush to get down in the deeper
dungeon and start hack and slaying.

Given that you manage to slow the game down and thereby are able
to talk to other characters in the game more easily, I think this
is quite a nice game. I liked the chit-chat between the game's
characters a lot, sure the conversations were a touch on the
shallow side but I found them interesting all the same, and you
had to type in whatever comments you wanted to make, unlike one
game I've seen whereby you merely click a box to either say Hello,
How are you?, Join, Job etc. Communication adds to the depth of
any game I feel, it makes the game world more believable. However
I felt that the 'idiot proof' element of the NPCs' conversation
wasn't really necessary.  Whenever you got chatting away to
someone they would typically say something fairly meaningless and
then add one word in heavy type. Obviously that was something of
note, and likely something you should ask the character about.
Hmm, just maybe the player could have worked this out for
themselves?

I found it quite amusing that when using the Look command you
would specify exactly which place you were looking at, even if
that place happened to be through a brick wall in another room.
(damned good eyesight, these Ultizurk characters!)

In the early stages of the game I found the going a tad on the
slow side, but that's to be expected on such games. Once you know
where you are going, where the armour, weapons etc are, and who
needs killing violently then you can really get your teeth into
things.

Later.  Aha, I found the doings and managed to do it! Whilst in
the game press shift and the underline key, then if you're using
a 486 enter the numbers 9400, 12, 10 not forgetting the commas.
That will make the controls much more sensible. For other
machines see the read.me file. (Okay, doesn't just everybody jump
straight into a new game without looking at the read.me file
first?)

Right, the game has just gone up one whole category! It isn't a
state of the art game and it never promises to be so, but you
could easily find yourself getting quite involved with this one.
The graphics aren't superb but I don't think that matters too
much, here's a world which is quite believable and which could
easily entertain you for weeks or months.

Rating: Good biscuit dipped in fresh Earl Grey tea!

Guide.
Hey Woo! - Very good!
Earl Grey - Good second (my 2nd favourite tea!)
Faintly Biscuit - better than average.
Flatulent - a lot of hot air and none too fresh.
U Bend - self-explanatory.

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