TIME: ALL THINGS COME TO AN END by Andy Phillips (1996)
      A TADS text adventure on 1076(PC) / 1013(Amiga)

                    Review by Bev Truter

This is another long, rambling and very complicated adventure with
a time-travel theme. TIME is strictly a narrow, linear game,
pushing you relentlessly forwards from one small set of locations
to the next without any choice on your part. If you solve all the
puzzles in one section, you are automatically swooshed along to the
next, and there is no way of returning to previous areas of the
game which you have completed. In some ways this geographical
set-up is similar to "Crime to the 9th Power", or Level 9's "The
Lords of Time", where your only means of progress through the game
is to solve a set of puzzles which in turn opens up some more
scenery with more problems to solve. This kind of narrowness can be
appealing in a way, as progress through the game world is very neat
and orderly, but the restriction to only one small chunk of scenery
until you've solved all the puzzles there can also drive you
bonkers with boredom and repetition.

The puzzles in TIME are many and varied, and only those in the
initial 3-location area could be described as easy to solve - all
the rest are difficult, more difficult, or impossibly difficult.
Many puzzles seemed to have almost illogical solutions, where even
after completing them you are left wondering "Huh??". There is no
opportunity to think ahead and plan what to do as in many
instances you will first have to die, then restore a saved game
and try to figure out how to avoid dying again. This method of
problem-solving was succinctly described by someone else as the
"play-die-swear-restore" method. Very apt!

A brief description of the prologue will explain some of the story
in TIME, but the plot details unfold very gradually as you wend
your way through the many locations, and for the first few areas
you will have only the haziest idea of what you are trying to
accomplish as an ultimate goal. The sub-goals in each area are
crystal clear - survive and escape and move along to the next area
in the game. Anyhow, here's the prologue: "Due to the
circumstances and lack of development in your project so far, your
contract will be terminated, effective immediately". That's what
he said. Some stupid corporate moron sitting in his office,
wearing a daft suit and DigiCorp Technologies tie. Years of work,
dozens of failed experiments, all the effort, simply to be phased
out by a bunch of stupid company directors. As you stand alone in
your laboratory, thinking about what might have been, you feel
desolate. If only the blasted machinery would work.

You begin the game in your laboratory, standing next to the
translocation machine which you failed to get working properly.
After opening the panel on the front you discover a power source
(removable) that needs to be powered. A violent storm is raging
overhead, and if you remember how Dr. Frankenstein brought his
monster to life it should be plain sailing getting some oomph into
your dead power source.

After getting your time machine in working order, you can use it
to transport yourself about 75 years into the future, to the
inside of a large garbage bin in a dingy alley. From your hiding
place in the bin you overhear the tail end of a threatening
conversation, which ends abruptly with the sound of someone being
shot. Climbing out of the bin you discover a dying man, and his
last words to you are to go to his apartment and find something
vital there; then he pleads with you to carry on his mission - to
thwart a powerful organization bent on abusing the powers of
time-travel with dire consequences for the future of the world.
Your arch-enemy throughout the game is a sinister female figure,
with extraordinary powers and a decidedly murderous personality.

TIME is the sort of game which you'll either be determined to solve
(have you got a spare 6 months?), or give up after the first 10
locations. I persevered to 54/200 points with copious hints from a
downloaded hint file; but from this point onwards the difficulty
factor looks like heavily outweighing the entertainment factor.
Problem is, it's just not *fun* to be stuck in the same small set
of locations, playing the same moves over and over and over again,
in the hope of discovering something new. Oh yes, and there's the
added difficulty of having a time limit in several scenes, which
means you have to charge around at a furious pace to get everything
done before being killed / arrested / exploded / strangled.

Another problem is deciding which items to take with you, and
which to leave behind. Since you can never return to "completed"
sections of the game, you are unable to retrieve any items you
dropped along the way; and some useless-looking items found in the
early stages of TIME are essential in later areas. Many objects
can be used more than once, so finding something to stuff all your
bits and pieces into becomes a necessity as the game progresses.

Although TIME is well-written, generating loads of atmosphere,
tension and suspense, it's just not my cup of tea. I rather like
the time-travel genre, and the plot is both intricate and
interesting; but ultimately wrestling with all those maddeningly
difficult problems was just too, too much. <Puts hand to forehead
in dramatic pose of anguish>. But if you've got plenty of
patience, time and determination you may find TIME a rewarding
game to play.


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