The Streets of London by Allen Webb and Grant Privett (1982)
Sorry I don't follow your banter? Sorry I can't beat the authors up!
The Streets of London, originally released on the Commodore 64, seems to be a great grand uncle of the 2002 disasterpiece Underground Compound, because it is equally unplayable and disgustingly bad.
In this "game" your protagonist, named Marvin K Molestrangler, is on a quest to find the Holy Grail of all things! The Streets of London's Wikipedia article (!) claims that the game's humour was based on Monty Python, which is more than an insult to the legendary comedy troupe. I could spot only one or two references during the time I wasted on this garbage, the main one of course being the Holy Grail.
Nothing in this game makes the slightest sense. The map is confusing, rooms completely undetailed. The player is moved around randomly. You are given no indication of what to do. The parser... don't even ask. Interactive fiction sure has come a long way, but this parser is atrocious even for 1982. Your enemies in this game (there is a real-time fighting minigame that is impenetrable and probably completely broken) consist of "nasty old ladies" and "antepodians" (misspelt). The game's complete lack of any coherence and reason was maybe be intended to be amusing, but in reality it only manages to annoy and induce anger.
The Streets of London is a remnant of the dark age of interactive fiction, and even in this category failed to produce any legacy other than being one of the frustratingly worst disgraces to videogaming ever produced. Truly, it baffles my mind what the authors ever intended to accomplish with this... but then again you would have to share their insanity to be able to enjoy The Streets of London...
1/10
Sunday, 20 September 2015
Sunday, 6 September 2015
Interactive Fiction review #7 - CERCLA
CERCLA by J. P. Robinson (1993)
I swear people make these horrible games on purpose!
CERCLA by Jeffrey P. Robinson is yet another example for a game that never should have been made.
Your valiant search for... documents or something (the introduction is REALLY boring) leads you through a maximum of 169 (!) rooms which are "luckily" mostly empty. What begins in an office environment soon turns into something suffering from "unnecessary-inclusion-of-fantasy syndrome"(tm). As soon as I encountered the first dwarf the game was pretty much over for me.
But of course the problems of this game start right away on the first screen. Rather than letting the player carry items in his inventory you have to use a container, which serves no purpose whatsoever other than making things more tedious for the player.
You can barely examine or do anything in this game. "I don't understand x as a verb. You can't see y here. I don't. You can't. Mehmy mehmy meh." It's so much fun playing a colossally huge game with barely anything to look at or do! I swear some people put bad gameplay in their games on purpose just to piss the unsuspecting player off!
The writing in this game is not quite as piss-poor as some other atrocities I've encountered, but there are some very weird things happening.
The men's and women's bathroom descriptions, for example, produce the exact same text (including some very specific things that make this completely illogical) other than replacing the words "men" and "women", respectively. On two different floors!!!
Poems (not the author's!) are included randomly. Items are usually "glued down" or can't be taken for other ridiculous reasons. There are weird political undertones. There is no differentiation between entering a room for the first and sequential times, so things happen again and again when you press look or leave and re-enter a room. Even a creature you can kill is resurrected this way! The seriousness of the memos and documents you find and read (all of them boring and uninteresting) is painfully juxtaposed with the silliness of encountering fantasy creatures. In one location you encounter, of all things, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I mean, what did you expect, the Addams Family?!
Documents specifically adressing the player just lie around in the game world. In one instance you find the directions you can go to not in the room description, but in a note you find on the ground!!!
This game is a total mess and probably the result of the usage of some weird drugs. In fact, only that would explain the existence of this abomination perfectly.
1/10
I swear people make these horrible games on purpose!
CERCLA by Jeffrey P. Robinson is yet another example for a game that never should have been made.
Your valiant search for... documents or something (the introduction is REALLY boring) leads you through a maximum of 169 (!) rooms which are "luckily" mostly empty. What begins in an office environment soon turns into something suffering from "unnecessary-inclusion-of-fantasy syndrome"(tm). As soon as I encountered the first dwarf the game was pretty much over for me.
But of course the problems of this game start right away on the first screen. Rather than letting the player carry items in his inventory you have to use a container, which serves no purpose whatsoever other than making things more tedious for the player.
You can barely examine or do anything in this game. "I don't understand x as a verb. You can't see y here. I don't. You can't. Mehmy mehmy meh." It's so much fun playing a colossally huge game with barely anything to look at or do! I swear some people put bad gameplay in their games on purpose just to piss the unsuspecting player off!
The writing in this game is not quite as piss-poor as some other atrocities I've encountered, but there are some very weird things happening.
The men's and women's bathroom descriptions, for example, produce the exact same text (including some very specific things that make this completely illogical) other than replacing the words "men" and "women", respectively. On two different floors!!!
Poems (not the author's!) are included randomly. Items are usually "glued down" or can't be taken for other ridiculous reasons. There are weird political undertones. There is no differentiation between entering a room for the first and sequential times, so things happen again and again when you press look or leave and re-enter a room. Even a creature you can kill is resurrected this way! The seriousness of the memos and documents you find and read (all of them boring and uninteresting) is painfully juxtaposed with the silliness of encountering fantasy creatures. In one location you encounter, of all things, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I mean, what did you expect, the Addams Family?!
Documents specifically adressing the player just lie around in the game world. In one instance you find the directions you can go to not in the room description, but in a note you find on the ground!!!
This game is a total mess and probably the result of the usage of some weird drugs. In fact, only that would explain the existence of this abomination perfectly.
1/10
Wednesday, 2 September 2015
Interactive fiction review #6 - The Onion of Destiny
The Onion of Destiny by Jason Dyer
Very short and plain speed-IF
The Onion of Destiny is a four-turn-minimum game set on the top of the Eiffel Tower. The sole puzzle is quickly figured out and the game over in a matter of minutes. You can also <spoiler>just wait for a number of turns to get the alternative ending.<end of spoiler>
There is really nothing noteworthy or special about this game, there is no humour or twist that would make it stand out even a little.
The only thing of interest I've noticed was a sentence missing a word ("The fistfight is far too complicated to possible"), but that's it. :-)
2/10
Very short and plain speed-IF
The Onion of Destiny is a four-turn-minimum game set on the top of the Eiffel Tower. The sole puzzle is quickly figured out and the game over in a matter of minutes. You can also <spoiler>just wait for a number of turns to get the alternative ending.<end of spoiler>
There is really nothing noteworthy or special about this game, there is no humour or twist that would make it stand out even a little.
The only thing of interest I've noticed was a sentence missing a word ("The fistfight is far too complicated to possible"), but that's it. :-)
2/10
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)