GAME REVIEW: OBITUS from Psygnosis ----------------------------------- OBITUS obitus, where art thou Obitus?? Sorry, I couldn't help myself.. well, Psygnosis have been around since the Amiga was a baby and have always released quality software which have stunned Amigans out there for the same amount of time. They do this via their excellent graphics/sound and introduction sequences to the games. And it's obvious that they've seen no reason why to break the record now. A distant clap of thunder is heard as lightning strikes the tree tops... in a matter of seconds two birds come flying out of an old tower ruin, and the lightning strikes the rubble, recreating the tower in an instant. All this is over in a matter of seconds.. and those who decidith to dwell within the tower walls shalt have no wound brought upon they by any mortal. The tower I speak of here is the one in the introduction sequence, and indeed I have described the introduction sequence as it is to you. Soon after the credits begint to roll and with a press of the fire button you're into the game. Now firstly I'd better outline what the game is like... well, it's an Adventure.. now don't boo and hiss at me like that, it's not just ANY old adventure where you type GO NORTH and if by magic (on an Atari ST it IS magic) you go to the room north of your location... oh no, it's nothing like that. It's more GRAPHICALLY and SOUND orientated, as well as having suffice arcade qualities mixed in to keep the most anti-adventurist person playing. The screen layout changes a little from place to place. When you first play you are greeted with two screens. A view screen, and an action screen. The ACTION screen contains three different parts. An ACTION part, an OBJECT part, a directional part and a sort of REQUESTER part. The Action Part: To the leftmost of the action part is your strength level. When your fatigue is great this goes down by the second or it is reduced by every enemy blow. It can be increased by eating eadible substances. It also contains all the actions you can perform in the game. These are as follows: EAT SLEEP USE PICK DISK DROP TALK PAUSE INFO EAT: This can only be performed on objects with a nutritional value. Depending on the nutrition the object contains (eg. Vials have more than apples) it increases your energy level by different amounts. SLEEP: Lets you go to sleep. This is good to reduce your fatigue and, in turn, reduce the risk of loosing strength due to a high level of fatigue. Sleeping for too long without eating CAN reduce your strength due to starvation. USE: An obvious one, this USES the object. By selecting USE and then pointing on something in the View screen (see below) it may do something. For example by selecting the LATERN (if you have it) whilst in the dark regions of a mine and selecting use and pressing anywhere in the View screen it USES the lantern and, in turn, lights up the screen for you. The lantern will then burn for some time before going at, at which at the end of this time you'll have to find/light another. PICK: Provided you have enough room, you can pick up any object on the screen. Simply select PICK and then click on the appropriate object on the screen and you will have it added to your inventory. Objects can often be found lying around or left by an enemy when killed. DISK: Used to save/restore your game. When selected a different screen comes up asking you to insert your save game disk. This may be any disk and not necessarily pre-formatted. There are 8 saved game positions on this screen, and once you select OK the program will attempt to get a catalog of the disk. If you have have previously saved a game on this disk then the game names (these come up as OBITUS 1 through to 8) and it will indicate with a small box which game you last saved. If the disk has NOT previously been saved to by the program then the boxes will not change. Now you may elect to LOAD, SAVE or QUIT. When you select SAVE your game will be saved to the next vacant save game spot. If there are none available then it will begin to overwrite the previous ones beggining at 1 and going through to 8. If you decide to LOAD then you are asked to click on the box of the game you wish to load. The LAST SAVED box is a good idea as it indicates, next to the box of the last saved game, which spot was the one last written to, and thus you can recall the latest game you have saved with ease. If you QUIT then you are returned back to the action/view screen. DROP: This lets you drop the current object. Useful if all your inventory spots are full and you wish to discard an object you no longer need/want. TALK: You run into many characters along the way. By selecting this icon and then clicking on the View screen on a friendly character the Action screen is removed and a scroll comes up showing what this person says. Often they give you valuable information and sometimes valuable objects. The good thing is you do not have to continually type in things like SAY "WHERE IS THE CASTLE?" as in some adventures, because the characters will simply tell you what you NEED to know when you select them while on the TALK icon, so it is simply a matter of finding them. PAUSE: This pauses the game. The screen is turned into a shade of greys such as in an old photo, and may be resumed by clicking the left mouse button again. INFO: This brings up the INFORMATION screen, and replaces the VIEW/ACTION screen until Quit is selected. It brings up the 25 inventory spots and gives an enlarged picture of the currently selected object and some information about it. You may click on any one of the 25 inventory boxes to select the object in it as your current object, and this is sometimes handy to save you from cycling through 25 objects to get to object 25 if you are currently on object 1. The information given about the object is as follows: QUANTITY - How many of this particular object you have. When you get weapons such as arrows it's a good idea to keep a track of this number as you may easily run out of a particular weapon right in the middle of killing someone/something. VALUE - How much the object is worth individually. OVERALL VALUE - How much the gross value (quantity * value) is worth. MYSTIC - How magical the object is. Some weapons such as GREEN FIRE hold a great magical value and should be saved for tricky opponents. NUTRITION - How nutritional the object is. Different foods/vials/ potions carry different nutritional values. The Object Part: It's a small window and simply shows a picture of the object you currently have as the selected one. You may hold up to 25 objects, and these are cycled through forward/backward by using two arrows beside the small window. Any instruction apart from DISK/PAUSE can be performed upon this object. It's a good idea to have this window selected on a weapon when wandering around as you can never be too sure when you might run into an opponent. The Directional Part: It is a small compass containing the directions N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW. The direction is highlited if you are currently facing that way. By clicking the mouse inside the box surrounding the letter "N" (for North) it will force your character to attempt to move FORWARD. In other words, if you are facing EAST and you may walk that way then you simply press the mouse button over the "N" box and it will move your character Forward. You can also move your character forward by pushing the joystick forward (joystick plugged in Port 2). Therefor, by pressing on the "S" icon it will move your character BACKWARD. You may also pull backward on the joystick for the same effect. By clicking the mouse button on the icon marked "E" it will turn your character CLOCKWISE. Example: If you are facing North then clicking on this will make your character turn Clockwise to face Nort-East. Clicking it again will make him face East. Again, South-East, and so on. You may also push the joystick to the Right for the same effect. So, clicking on the icon marked "W" will move your Character Anti-Clockwise. Example: You're facing North and you click on this, then you will turn your character to face North-West, and if you click on it again you will face West. Pushing the joystick Left will also turn the character Anti-Clockwise. There are no icons surrounding the NE,SE,SW or NW directions but simply arrows which highlight accordingly to show if you are facing in that direction. Now the actual MOVING forward/backward is the hard part to explain. Let me see. In a Text Adventure if you enter "GO NORTH" or "NORTH" you are immediately moved to the location NORTH of your position, provided you can go that way. Now obviously this doesn't mean you take a single step to the North, but in fact you take many steps North, perhaps 10 or more, to get to the location North of where you are. In OBITUS, the same effect is given by rotating your character to face "N" (North. The N will be highlighted) and seeing if you can go that way, and if so then pressing on the "N" icon will move you forward. But only a single step. So, to move forward to the next LOCATION you must click the "N" icon several times. Or, you may simply hold the left mouse button over it and your character will continue to walk that way until you release the button. You may stop walking in between locations at any time you wish and perform any of the functions possible EXCEPT rotating direction. The COMPASS will highlight when you are at a location, so you may rotate your character whenver the compass is highlighted. It's very tricky to explain actually. So, all in all, you have a compass which allows you to move forward/backward provided you can go in those directions, and it will let you ROTATE around to face different directions once you are at a location. This having to hold move between locations manually can be a little awkward at first, but you will get use to it very quickly. Often there are enemies standing in between locations, and so you must dispose of them before being able to completely move on to the next location, or there may be objects lying in between locations. And indeed it adds an effect of realism to the game, much unlike the old way of 'jumping' from location to location like you're playing leap frog. The 'request' part: Well that's what I call it anyway! Here it will flash a small disk icon with the number of the disk it requires if it needs to access another disk (OBITUS comes across 4 disks) if it is not inserted in any of the available drives. But it also has other uses such as containing a small picture of a scroll if you happen to have a scroll as your current object, indicating you may read it. The VIEW Screen: Aha, now after explaining all that to you (thought I might try and write a manual actually!) I can get on with the actual game. The View screem lies directly above the Action Screen and contains a small piccie of your current location. It is not like many other adventures where when you move to another location a disk access is made to load a totally different picture. No, it's way different from that. Ok, then how is it you ask? Here I go to try and explain something again! When you start you are inside the tower. You simply Pick up the key and use it on the appropriate door (there are 4 doors) to open the door, and then you press on the "N" Icon and it will tell you "You are leaving the current Area, do you wish to do this?" If you select no then you will not move anywhere. If you select YES, then you exit from the tower and into the woods. A short description of the woods is given on the View Screen while the computer loads the data for the Woods. (Users with insufficient drives to hold all the disks will be requested in the request box to insert the correct disk if needed) Once loaded you are greeted with a picture of some trees. This, my fellow readers, is the woods. (Maybe some of our Greenpeace viewers may buy this game to see the last remaining trees of Earth!) Now in most adventures this is a single picture, and when you move to another location you'll almost certainly get a nice different picture. Well, in Obitus if you turn to face you will see the view scroll around to face North, and if you can go that way you will see a sort of path leading off and the trees on either side gradually getting smaller as they grow futher from you, and it all gets gradually darker into complete darkness. "So what, I can draw that" I hear you say... ah, but the difference is now when you push on the "N" icon to move forward the trees scroll towards you beautifully and smoothly, like you really are walking down a trail past some trees. And out of the blackness you will see more trees come gradually getting lighter and bigger such as in real life until you either halt or come to an end in the next location. It really is very well done and thought out, and although you DO get the same old trees in every location it doesn't really get boring. It adds what I have been looking for in adventures: REALISM. Somehow typing in on the keyboard "GET THE RED STONE" didn't make my day or even my cup of tea, but when I played Obitus I felt more interactive with the game and definately more in control of what I was doing. It is somewhat like games such as DEJA VU and SHADOWGATE, where you can actually interact with the screen, but indeed the scrolling and walking adds that little extra touch. Well, there it is. Obitus. No it's not. There's something I've forgotten. That's right. The Arcade-Type scenes. No, Psygnosis weren't going to tackle this project lying down!! In between some AREAS (not locations but Areas such as where you travel from the Woods to the Mine) there is a very long stretch of road. Now instead of making you hold down the NORTH (forward) icon all the way and have to take out the enemies by the same way you do in the forest (that's selecting a weapon such as Arrows or Knives, then clicking on the USE icon and then moving along until you meet an unwanted character and pressing the left mouse button over him and firing that weapon at him) they've decided to go that little bit futher. Those of you who remember Shadow Of The Beast, well these sections of the game (there are several of them) are much like that. The View screen remains the same but the Action Screen is completely scrubbed and a Weapon screen comes up, showing your available weapons and how many of them you have left, and a red box around the one you currently have selected. Now you grab the joystick and go for a run! Firing the weapon is easy enough, it's simply a matter of pressing the fire button. Enemies can also be disposed of by simply touching them too. To change weapons you must pull back on the joystick and press fire. Your man can run in either of two directions: Left or Right. If you get too badly wounded you can always retreat back the way you came. You can also jump (straight up in the air or summersolt forward) and you can also duck down. Running along is a nice effect with several planes of parallax scrolling giving a smooth effect of moving. There are many an array of enemy along your path in the arcade scene. These include goblins which hide behind leaves and poke their ugly head and bow & arrow out at you as you approach and fire at you, men with catapults who sit there and fire nice big rocks at you, wizards who walk towards you and fire magical bolts of fire and even little men hiding at the very top of the screen behind the undergrowth which runs on top of the screen. These little men wait for you to approach and then drop boulders down at you. Careful timing must be taken to make it past them. It can add a nice break from the wandering around inside a location and can keep you interested. All in all you must think this is a very good game, and yet the action doesn't stop yet. There is yet another type of arcade scene which is a mix between both the normal and the arcade scene. In this you control your man walking around using the joystick but the Action screen remains. So, in other words, you now see your man and you can control him around using the joystick but still perform the same functions such as pick up, eat, sleep etc. etc. It is often easier to control the game through the joystick but have someone on the mouse to pick up/talk/select objects. Well I'd better end my review there before I get too tedious, if I haven't done that already. But it is suffice to say in my closing words that this game is VERY well thought out, and it includes some great ideas and programming, excellent graphics and sound, but most of all it is FUN and it includes playability and LASTABILITY. Because of the way the graphics are presented it has left the designers alot of memory to design huge maps which will take you quite a while to find your way around. It will also take some thinking too. You can't simply run around and beat up every enemy you see, because it's just not possible to complete the game like that. It'll take some careful planning and mapping to find the correct objects and tasks to complete, and I suggest have a save disk ready because it's just not possible to finish this game off in one hit!!! On my final note I should say that one of the most surprising things to me is the fact that even though there is a load when you go to a different Area, when you return to that Area and it re-loads any doors that you may have opened will still be open and any enemies you may have killed will still be dead, and any objects left will still be there. Even when you save the game it is all retained perfectly. This is a definate good sign from Psygnosis, and I'll be looking forward to more great releases from them in '91. The Ratings: GRAPHICS 97% - Psygnosis have always lead in this department and have never let down in any of their games. They seem to simply get better and better, and their opening sequences have always been a treat to watch! SOUND 65% - Catchy title tune and opening sound effects which seem to let down in the game. Still, they ARE there so I guess it's better than nothing, scarce as they are. PLAYABILITY 95% - It won't take you long to catch on to the adventure and arcade system and when you do it'll become almost like a second nature. It really does combine very effectively to provide a great environment to play in. LASTABILITY 92% - It'll keep you interested for a while and there's plenty of mapping to do, and a certain need to see what this potion does or what this gem does. OVERALL 90% - Another Psygnosis game to make the 90% mark, and it deserves it. Keep up the good work! Reviewed for Newsflash by J. Webster. ======================================== *** SPECIAL THANKS to ANGELS/DEFJAM. *** ========================================