DUCKSOUP by C. Evans A text adventure on disks PCPD 681 & STPD 705 Review by Bev Truter I'd ordered this AGT text adventure from Sue ages ago, but never got around to playing it. So when I was struck down by a virulent cold a few weeks ago I decided to wheeze and sneeze my way through it, looking for some comedic relief for my misery. All I got was an increasingly large dose of irritation, and in the end I gave up, asked Sue for the author's solution, and plodded my way through Ducksoup by referring frequently to it. Ducksoup has a catchy title and a novel storyline. You play the part of Burke, a somewhat seedy detective by the sounds of it. After arriving home one day and dealing with your dog's "poop" up on the roof of your apartment, you hear the front doorbell ring. It turns out to be a Miss Flood, and she wants to hire you to find her missing rubber duck, Dimples, last seen floating in her bath. To find Dimples you first have to find / make / locate 3 other ducks, each of which you must take to Miss Flood's cottage and show her. The action takes place over about 30 locations, and you can drive between 4 main areas - your apartment, the shops, Vasona Park and Miss Flood's Cottage. Driving your car has been well-handled, as you just have to "enter car", then "drive s" etc. to reach each location, where you automatically park your car and get out. Your first port of call is the local supermarket, where you encounter the first duck, and it's here that my gripes with the lack of synonyms started. To solve this puzzle you have to attempt to buy the duck - stealing it won't work - and the game only accepts two fairly elusive inputs to solve this problem. Then came gripe number 2 - the sudden and unavoidable death syndrome. To find out what is in a sewer, you have to get yourself killed, then restore a saved game and continue from there. Gripe number 3 was the chain. At one point you discover you are holding "the end" (of a chain) which is attached to another fixed object. Fine, I thought, find something to attach the chain to. Nope, nothing in sight. It turns out you have to backtrack through several locations, enter your car and drive (several miles, one assumes) still clutching "the end", then get a character in the game to hold it for you. Oh yes, silly me, now why didn't I think of that?? At Vasona Park you discover there's a duck race being held down at the creek, and if you've managed to create a duck from a couple of unlikely objects (syrup and popcorn make a duck that FLOATS?) you'll be able to enter it in the duck race. Entering your duck is a breeze - "put duck in creek" - but how do you get the darn thing to win the race? Check the solution, that's how. Of all illogical inputs, this one took the cake. After winning yet another duck as first prize, you'll have to trot off and show it to Miss Flood, then consult the local vet about training Pansy (your dog). If you've done the necessary things beforehand then Pansy will eventually rescue that mess down in the sewers for you, and all that remains is for you to clean it somehow, which brings me to my umpteenth gripe. There's a character in the game called Poplolly, or Pop for short. To solve part of the mess-cleaning problem, you have to remove something that's stuck to your foot, and to do so you have to talk to Poplolly but refer to him as "Lollypop". This makes him lose his temper, and ultimately the object on your foot is removed. Now why didn't I think of that? It's great to create imaginative puzzles in a game as long as there is some small degree of logic in them. But to expect a player to spontaneously guess some of the wildly illogical inputs required in Ducksoup is just thoughtless of the author. It doesn't make a game more amusing if you have to carry out silly, illogical actions; it just makes it more frustrating. By the halfway mark I was ready to throttle both Miss Flood and every single duck I came across. Ducksoup was a novel concept for a text game, with the possibilities of being funny as well. Unfortunately the illogical solutions to many of the game's problems ruined any humour in the storyline. I rapidly discovered it's impossible to be irritated and amused simultaneously, and overall I'd describe Ducksoup as a shortish but annoying game to play. If you intend tackling it, make sure you get the solution from Sue beforehand - you'll need it. There's also a solution on the Net for Ducksoup, but it's wrong in a couple of places. - o -