Rama / Sierra Reviewed by Neil Shipman 'Welcome to Rama. I'm Arthur C. Clarke. You are about to enter a gigantic cylinder that has suddenly arrived in our solar system from the depths of space. Whatever intelligence launched Rama on its interstellar journey demands technologies we humans can barely imagine. Does this intruder from the stars pose a threat to Earth? You are now an astronaut sent to replace a colleague who mysteriously died only a few hours after a crew of twelve humans made their initial rendezvous with Rama. Your mission is to enter and explore this artificial world and uncover its secrets for humanity. Inside Rama you and the other astronauts will encounter an astonishing world filled with architectural and engineering marvels including intelligent machines. Mixed among these alien wonders are complex puzzles and tantalising clues that offer a glimpse of the extraterrestrial beings who constructed this gigantic hollow world. Will you meet the Ramans themselves? Ah. I don't want to spoil your fun but I personally guarantee that as you unravel the many mysteries inside Rama you will have an experience unlike anything you've ever known before. Gentry Lee and I are delighted to share with you this unique vision of the Rama universe. We hope that you will find our Rama world as engrossing and compelling as millions of moviegoers have found 2001: A Space Odyssey over the past quarter century.' This is the short prologue, (c) Sierra, to Rama and it is accompanied by screenshots or short videoclips of some of the alien architecture, machines and life forms you will encounter in the course of the game. Following your transfer by shuttle and docking with Rama you arrive at the hub camp at the southern end of the 50km long cylinder where you are greeted by medical officer Nicole des Jardins. She quickly familiarises you with your new environment before leaving by cable car for the base camp which the astronauts have set up on the inner surface of Rama. A quick check on your wrist computer and on the main console at the camp shows you vidmails from most of your fellow crewmembers. These are short, quarter-screen full motion videoclips showing either the people themselves or something they are demonstrating. You quickly discover that this is a crew made up of individuals with very different agendas - scientific exploration, broadcasting fame, military security, understanding alien technology for human benefit - all which contributes to the feeling of paranoia which can you sense very early on. Early discovery of a nuclear device presumably capable of destroying Rama serves to fuel this feeling further. If you've read Rendezvous with Rama or the sequel, Rama II, on which the game is based (and a copy of which is included with it) you'll already be familiar with the enormous cylinder, its cities, artifacts and inhabitants. The game is fairly faithful to the book which can make your understanding of what's going on easier than might be the case for someone approaching it with a fresh, open mind. Prior knowledge doesn't, however, make moving around Rama or tackling the many puzzles with which you are faced any easier. Clarke is well-known for his typically 'hard' science fiction - logic prevails both in the overall concept of this alien world and in the puzzles you must solve. Problem-solving is, for me, perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of adventuring, generally rating above the themes of exploration and discovery, and this is one area where Rama disappoints. Granted, there are a lot of puzzles with logical solutions, but they tend to concentrate on numbers, colours, shapes and patterns and are reminiscent of questions in an IQ test. One or two simple maths problems in base 8 or base 16, or fitting a particular piece of tile into the last corner of a 3 x 3 grid to operate a lock, are okay, but these soon become repetitive and I quickly began to feel a bit irritated at the lack of inventiveness in puzzle design. The life forms you encounter, particularly the avians and octospiders, are well-designed and animated, and their methods of communication and interaction well-thought out. However, having read Rama II a few years ago, I have rather different ideas of what they should be like and in the game they are not really alien enough for my taste. The different types of biots (biological robotic machines) which go about their business inside the huge cylinder are also interesting and I particularly liked the clanking caterpillar biots as well as the formation-marching crab biots with their deadly pincers - definitely ones to avoid! It can be difficult to establish your orientation on Rama, especially if you are not used to 360 degree views in adventures, but you are aided by a compass at the bottom of the display screen and by a map on your wrist computer. At least, that's the theory. In practice, however, I found it hard to keep an image in my head of exactly where I was, particularly in the avian, octospider and human plazas in one of the cities. Getting from one point of interest to another on the central plains of the huge cylinder is easily accomplished with the aid of a two dimensional radar map. This shows all the cities, camps, structures, biots etc as well as the location of each of your fellow astronauts. Interaction with other people is limited to the small vidmail clips plus half-screen videos of them telling you about someone or something and, occasionally, handing you an item like a datacube with information on it to download into your wrist computer. Nearly all the characters seem to talk down to you and at times you feel as if you are there very much on sufferance rather than as a respected fellow crewmember. I felt that much of the acting was rather superficial, one exception being the genuine sense of wonder shown by Dr Takagishi on catching a glimpse of an octospider for the first time. The grainy quality of the videoclips and the relatively dull, flat artwork are reminiscent of much older adventures than Rama, although this may partly be due to its being designed to run on lower spec computers. What is particularly frustrating though is that when many of these clips came to an end the game crashed - and that was on a higher spec Pentium II with loads of memory. I lost count of the times I was confronted by the dialog box entitled 'Panic!' with its message, 'We're sorry, you have encountered an internal game error. Please restart your game and restore a saved game.' The inventory is another unsatisfactory aspect of Rama. With the amount of unused space around the display area of the screen it was a pity that it was not made larger or designed for easier use. You are only shown eight objects and continually having to click and scroll four at a time to find the one you want out of some forty items is tiresome. On the plus side, you do get the chance to see and manipulate objects in the main screen to make use of special functions or find out otherwise hidden information. Sound effects and musical score are effective although not dramatic. Characters' speech is usually very clear and, separately from the game, it is interesting to watch and listen to the interviews with Clarke and Gentry Lee talking about Rama. To sum up, I was looking forward to my opportunity of exploring Rama, seeing the author's imagination brought to life on screen and getting to grips with some interesting puzzles, but I found much of the adventure rather tedious. If you really want to think about Clarke's ideas and be entertained into the bargain, then reading the four Rama novels is probably a better bet. PC system requirements are: Windows 95 or DOS 5.0 or higher 486DX4/99 MHz processor or higher 12MB RAM (Win 95), 8MB RAM (DOS) SVGA video adapter 640 x 480, 256 colours Windows Soundblaster compatible soundcard Double-speed CD-ROM drive - o -