ADVENTURES IN NMR2 by Douglas Burum
            A text adventure on SynTax disk 222

                    Review by Bev Truter

NMR2, the sequel to NMR1, has a more engaging plot than the
original. This time around you are doing battle with a bunch of
sneaky aliens, rather than tearing your hair out over that dratted
spectrometer. But first, a word of warning. NMR2 is fatally
bugged, right near the beginning, in the original version. If you
want the "fixed" PC version (which has "fixed version" underneath
the author's name on the title screen), then contact Sue for a
copy. In the original version you need to open a safe in the
initial location to get a weapon inside it, and unfortunately this
was impossible due to a ridiculous series of programming errors in
the command file. Also, the excellent hint system never worked
properly, and this has now been remedied in the "fixed" version.

In NMR2 you play the role of a research chemist working at a
top-secret government laboratory in the year 2001. The earth has
been invaded by powerful aliens who can transform their appearance
at will, which makes them very hard to recognize. This has made
security a primary key to the defence of the planet. Despite many
heroic efforts the war is not going well. However, things might
soon take a turn for the better as it has recently been learned
that the secret of this alien transformation power lies in a
special substance manufactured by the alien body that acts as a
catalyst. A small amount of this substance has been brought to
your laboratory for analysis, and your goal in playing NMR2 is to
measure the NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) spectrum of this
substance, without killing yourself or wrecking the spectrometer.

Like NMR1, this sequel has also been written using AGT, and
unfortunately this reveals the author's incompetency in overcoming
some of the more annoying standard system responses inherent in
AGT. For example, there are no commands to counter the standard
"death" commands in AGT - i.e. you die in puffs of green smoke,
and get tossed back to the desktop. There's also a problem with a
pocket, which can be picked up with the command GET POCKET while
holding the lab-coat it's meant to be attached to. Apart from
these minor glitches I found NMR2 a more enjoyable game to play
than its predecessor as there was a stronger plot and greater
motivation for the player - let's face it, it's always very
satisfying to save the world, or bits of it, from destruction.

Having said that, there is one major moan I have about this game,
and that is the <censored> maze it contains. NMR2 is a short,
25-location game, and would you believe that 15 of those locations
form a silly, pointless, tiresome "Bureaucratic Maze", which has
to be trundled through to find a vital piece of paper. To make
matters worse you only have a maximum of about 5 items to drop in
the classic maze-solving method, and that includes the ruddy
detachable pocket. Cheat and decompile is my advice for solving
the maze - does *anyone* out there actually enjoy mapping out
mazes in the nineties?

On the plus side, NMR2 has an in-built hint system which allows
you to access hints for each topic, ranging from vague to
almost-explicit. Using the hint system deducts a few points from
your score each time, and to avoid this save a game before typing
"hint", then restore your position after finding out what you need
to know.

Some of the characters you have to deal with in NMR2 are a
talkative salesman, an unobliging secretary, an alert security
guard, a surly clerk and, of course, a few of the nasty aliens as
well. Although your range of interaction with all game characters
is very limited, they are described well enough for you to form a
distinct impression of each character's personality. The same goes
for location descriptions which are mainly sparse but adequate
enough to convey a realistic impression of your surroundings. The
maximum score claims to be 400 points, but I managed to finish
with 450/400 - another oversight somewhere in the innards of NMR2
that the author didn't account for?

Overall this isn't one of the "great" text adventures I've chanced
upon, but it's not a real turkey either. (It's just as well I
wrote this review near Christmas, when I was in a forgiving mood
about that maze.)