Received: from decwrl.dec.com by s.ms.uky.edu id aa07403; 13 Aug 90 3:37 EDT Received: by decwrl.dec.com; id AA29493; Mon, 13 Aug 90 00:36:09 -0700 Message-Id: <9008130736.AA29493@decwrl.dec.com> Received: by limbo; Mon, 13 Aug 90 00:11:05 pdt From: The Moderator Date: Mon, 13 Aug 90 0:11:02 PDT Subject: Digital Games Review Digest, #8 Reply-To: Digital Games Review To: Digital Games Review Digest X-Mailer: fastmail [version 2.02] Digital Games Review Digest, Number 8 Monday, August 13th 1990 Today's Topics: Mac: Deja Vu, Deja Vu II Mac: Shadowgate NES: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles PC: "Avon" and "Murdac" NES: Toobin' NES: RBI Baseball 2 Amiga: The Plague Amiga: Flood, Unreal and Wings of Fury PC: Drakkhen ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Sanjiv Sarwate Subject: Mac: Deja Vu, Deja Vu II DEJA VU: A NIGHTMARE COMES TRUE As this adventure opens, you wake up in a dingy bathroom stall in the back of a cheap bar. A stiffness under your arm tells you you've been injected with something. Then, it suddenly hits you: You have no memory. No idea of who you are, where you've been, nothing. Thus opens Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True. Your character (unnamed for now) has amnesia. There's a body in the office upstairs. And everything seems to point to YOU as the murderer. The cops are after you, but that's the least among your many problems. You are slowly dying from something that feels a lot worse than your worse hangover. And you have very little time. Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True has been around for a while (long enough to spawn a sequel anyway), but the achievment of this game is just as impressive now as it was then. For the Macintosh, this is the perfect adventure. The objects in the game are graphic icons. To take an object, you simply drag it from the picture window showing where you are to your inventory window. To view the contents of an object, simply double click on it. The command structure is very simple. There are only eight commands: Examine, Open, Close, Go, Hit, Operate, Speak, and Consume. The majority of the player's exploring in this world is done through the mouse. No commands are entered in as text, with the notable exception of Speak, where a dialog box pops up asking you what you wish to say. Some adventure gamers used to the Infocom style of adventure may feel that this format is somewhat restrictive. I did not find it to be so. The adventure is quite challenging even with this somewhat "restrictive" interface. The game is very well designed, with a myriad of puzzles to solve. It is a good idea to save often, as many times, experimentation is required to successfully complete a problem, and death is the penalty for guessing wrong. There are very few well designed detective games on the market, but Deja Vu is one of the best of the best. Deja Vu, for the Macintosh, from ICOM Simulations DEJA VU II: LOST IN LAS VEGAS It is not very often that the sequel to a game comes even close to the quality of the original. Deja Vu II is a sequel that is just as well-designed as the original. The story basically starts very similar. You wake up in a bathroom, this time in a Las Vegas hotel. It seems that the racketeer of whose murder you had recently been cleared was running his Chicago racket as a leg man for the notorious Las Vegas mobster Tony Malone. The Chicago racketeer's death left $112,000 of Malone's money unaccounted for. Your involvement in his murder case makes YOU the logical candidate to find out what happened to the money. And to make sure you don't get any funny ideas, you're being watched closely by Malone's #1 gorilla: Stogie Martin. The wonderful interface from the original is used here also. The sound effects are also more varied and very well done. The puzzles here are not that much harder than the first game, and a lot of them are a little easier if you've solved the first game. It is not absolutely necessary to have solved the first game to solve the sequel, but it does help in navigation (this is the only unambiguous clue I will give). You have a time limitation here, also. One week, and Stogie shows up periodically to remind you of Malone's impatience. One thing I did not like about this game was the number of absolute red herrings. I wasted a lot of time on things that were unimportant. The game is stil very well done, and worth having. A word of warning: You will have to boot off of a different system disk to run the game. Deja Vu II, for the Macintosh, from ICOM Simulations ------------------------------ From: Sanjiv Sarwate Subject: Mac: Shadowgate SHADOWGATE The Good Wizards have found out a terrible secret. The evil Warlock Lord seeks to raise the Behemoth, mightiest and most evil of the Titans to assist him in domination of the world. Only you, as the seed of prophecy can stop the Warlock Lord and his mad ambition, by entering his dread sanctuary, Castle Shadowgate, and ending his plan. Thus begins Shadowgate, the fantasy "dungeon crawl" from the makers of the Deja Vu series. The icon-based interface is used well here, and the puzzles are quite clever. One problem here that does not exist in either of the Deja Vu games is the problem of illumination. In a fashion reminiscient of the Zork games, you must always have a light source (in this case, a torch) lit. Part of the challenge is juggling your objects so you have enough torches to survive. Shadowgate is a very well designed fantasy adventure, but there are better available. It lacks the character development features of many games available, and it will dissapoint those who want to slay a lot of monsters. There is no monster which you can get by by simply swinging your sword at it (if you find a sword. you enter the castle with just one torch, and that dies in three turns or so.). The puzzles are brain-twisters, however, so if that's up your alley, this game is for you. If you prefer hack'n'slash dungeon crawls to cerebral adventures, this game will probably not appeal to you that much. Shadowgate, for the Macintosh, from ICOM Simulations ------------------------------ From: cchan@nunki.usc.edu (Clifford Chan) Subject: NES: Mutant Ninja Turtles Review Date: 6 Aug 90 04:02:02 GMT A quick game description: You control 4 turtles. Each has a different weapon which is best suited for certain situations. You control one turtle at a time, and can switch between surviving turtles at any time. Each turtle can also carry an extra weapon that can be picked up from dead opponents, such as shurikens, triple shurikens, boomrangs, etc. Your initial goal is to rescue April, who has been kidnapped by the Foot Clan. You do this by walking around New York, avoiding Foot Clansmen and Steamrollers (death), and entering sewers and buildings. Of course, once inside these sewers and buildings, you must fight your way thru all sorts of opponents and obstacles. After suceeding in the rescue, you must complete a totally new scenario swimming underwater disabling bombs under a dam. Then you must rescue Splinter in a much bigger city. You also now have a armed turtle van to destroy barricades, enemy steamrollers, etc. Of course, the enemy gets tougher. After completing this mission (not easy), you go to JFK airport. Here, you must enter various manholes and buildings looking for hangar 18, where the Giant Mouser hangs out. He is a cinch to beat once you know how. After the airport, you take a blimp to the Foot Clan's camp. You must avoid searchlights and explore the camp looking for pizza (restores life energy), weapons, and the lair of the Technodrome(?), a giant tank you must destroy. The final level after this has you looking for a friend. You have no map unlike other levels. More on this level later. This game is great. The graphics and game play are top notch. I wish the four turtles looked more different and that Splinter and the girl looked less like colored blobs, but other than that I have no complaints. But, there is no way to continue indefinitely. It takes a long time to get just to the Airport. There should be some sort of code you can enter so you could skip the beginning parts you have already mastered and save time, like some other NES games have, Metroid for example. This game takes a long time to play. I guess that's could Beither be good or bad according to how much free time you have. The cartoon intermissions are cool. The variety of game play is excellent. There are many, many different types of enemies to defeat as well as obstacles. THe game requires a fair amount of strategy to be successful, too. The main problem with this game is the final level. It is just too darn hard. Nobody I know of has completed this level, and I know some good video gamers. There is very little pizza, and there is this flying guy with a jet pack that shoots in all directions and just blows you away. There doesn't seem to be any effective way to defend against him. Most people just get fustrated and give up on the game at this point. Once the sense in spending 2 hours to get to the final level, only to wiped out in minutes at the final level? The game only allows you 2 continues, by the way, another disadvantage. Another small complaint I have about game play is that there are some places in the game where it is IMPOSSIBLE not to get hit. This happens mainly when you are climbing ladders to get to the next level and there is always a guy waiting there to blast you. Not major, but annoying. The only other annoying feature of the game is that each turtle can have up to two weapons. Sometimes when you switch turtles during a fight, he will be using the wrong weapon. This seems to be a random occurance as far as I can tell. It can still cause you to lose hit points unnecessarily Sound is good for the NES. The music gets repetitious at times, especially if you get stuck at the same part of the game for awhile. Otherwise, it helps to put you into the spirit of the game. The manual is adequate, but only lists a small percentage of the bad guys you will encounter. It is also very vague on things like how to use the rope, the map, exactly what you should be doing at certain points in the game other than killing creatures, etc. This really shouldn't confuse an experienced video gamer, but could cause problems for a novice. Overall, the game is really fun despite the above complaints. My roomate like it better than Super Mario Brothers. It should keep you entertained for some time. I don't regret buying it. I especially like the varied game skills you need to advance in the game (fighting vs. swimming vs. driving), and the many different opponents and scenarios the game gives you, each of which requires a different strategy to overcome. Graphics: 9 Sound: 8 Manual: 4 Fun Level: 9 Overall Rating: 9 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for the Nintendo Entertainment System, from Ultra Games. ------------------------------ From: Atkinson@vaxrom.decnet.cern.ch Subject: PC: "Avon" and "Murdac" Avon/Murdac is a disk containing two text adventures. Both are quite small. (100 locations?) Like all games by Topologika, these are text adventures of reasonable difficulty, with no pictures, reasonable parser (ie INFOCOM level - put all except bottle under bed then jump over box) and good number of puzzles. Note that, eg "Deja Vu" did NOT have a reasonable number of puzzles, and that in my opinion pictures are a total waste of time and memory in an adventure. "Avon" is by far the strangest game published so far by Topologika. Room descriptions, messages, objects and problems are all made up of Shakespeare quotations. The answers to the problems are NOT in general from Shakespeare, and no knowledge of his works is necessary to solve the game, although spotting all the references is quite fun. Examples: The first room is described thus... "From here, you can see that all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances to the north, south, east and west." Objects include laundry baskets, daggers, butts of Malmsey and so on. This is NOT an easy game. It is harder than "Starcross" by Infocom, and at least as hard as 'Spellbreaker' by Infocom. An interesting element of the game is the fact that due to a potion of mandragora, the game takes place on three separate dates (including the Ides of March). Some areas must be visited on all three days, and some apparent puzzles are simply impassable barriers, which are not present on other days. There are no "boring" mazes (ie drop objects on the floor and map the place), which is typical of Topologika products. There are some "imaginitive" ones (some other method of finding your way in/out/through exists). "Murdac" is, along with "Hamil" (published in 1988) one of the two easiest games published by Topologika so far. (Though "Sangraal" and "Crobe" written specially for beginners should be coming out within the next year or two - games finished, but still undergoing blind testing to spot bugs, missing synonyms, etc). It is about as hard as "Starcross" from Infocom. It is a "Colossal Cave" style game, ie vaguely fantasy atmosphere, collect treasure items together to score points, magic words and so on. It has a number of puzzles which can be "apparently" solved without really being finished. I don't want to give a real example, for obvious reasons, but consider the following: You have some food, and there is a wolf. You give the food to the wolf, and he lets you past. This looks to be the solution. Later, you find another use for the food and realise there must be another way past the wolf. Murdac has some rather more subtle cases of this. It has one of the cruellest mazes I have ever seen. (Cruelty number 1: The snake maze from 'Acheton', 2nd place the Maize maze from "Hamil", 3rd place the black hole in Murdac). The black hole maze is a maze in which light does not work, objects dropped on the floor disappear (so you can't map the maze by picking up objects and doing inventories etc) AND some rooms have the same distribution of exits. This maze is offensively nasty to map, but at least it is not "usual". I solved some of the puzzles in Murdac only by elimination. I simply couldn't get past a certain point, and had a couple of "Don't know what this is for" items left. Pairing those up, I was able to obtain something which allowed me to proceed. I think this is reasonable enough. I do not wish to be at all clear about the items/situations/problems involved, as that would be too helpful. Avon + Murdac, for the BBC, Archimedes, Amstrad and PC by Topologika Contact JRP1@phoenix.cambridge.ac.uk for more details of this and other games by Topologika. ------------------------------ From: walsh%sharona.csd@sgi.com (Timothy E Walsh) Subject: NES: Toobin' This is Tengen's version of the popular arcade game released by Atari two years ago. The game features the two characters, Biff and Jet, innertubing down dozens of different rivers and canals from around the world ( . . . and beyond). The object of this game is to safely raft down each scene while avoiding the screen's nasties (hostile natives, wild animals, etc) and natural obstacles (twigs, rocks, thunderstorms, etc). While doing this, one tries to score as many points as possible by collecting treasure chests, patches, soda cans, and letters to spell "TOOBIN'". Scores can be increased further by navigating through slalom-type gates and increasing the score mutliplier. The nasties and obstacles can be neutralized by throwing the soda cans at them. If you loved the arcade version of TOOBIN', as did I, you will be immediately disappointed by Tengen's version. The first thing you will surely notice is that the two-player game does not allow head to head play as did the arcade version. Instead, Biff and Jet take turns innertubing down the rivers. Secondly, the controls are much more restrictive than the arcade style game. The tubes cannot rotate as they raft downstream, and therefore, one throws the soda cans at a fixed angle on either side of the tube. Thus, the game sat at the bottom of my cartridge collection for nearly a week before I gave it one more try to win me over. Fortunately for me (and Tengen), it did. Once I had temporarily blotted out the memory of the Atari's arcade version, I fell prey to the game's addictive nature. The graphics and sound are very well done, and the constantly changing scenery (both within the level and the different levels, altogether) will keep you constantly wondering what's next, and unfortunately, up very late finding out. Expect to show up at your workplace a couple times red-eyed because of this. I also appreciate the addition of warp zones so one can quickly skip through the easier levels. Toobin' is not as good as the arcade version, but a very "tubular" game in its own right. Graphics/Sound: 8 Excitement: 6 Manual: 2 Overall: 6 TOOBIN' for the Nintendo Entertainment System by Tengen ------------------------------ From: walsh%sharona.csd@sgi.com (Timothy E Walsh) Subject: NES: RBI Baseball 2 This is Tengen's update on their original RBI Baseball game. This new game is released with many enhancements and modifications which allow the recreation of any 1989 Major League baseball game (the first version contained teams and stats for the 1987 season). The object of the game is to either win a best-of-7-games series when playing an American League team vs. National League team, or try defeat all teams within your league. As the title implies, this is the update of the older RBI Baseball. This poses a particular problem for those who already own the original RBI Baseball: is this game so good that I should buy it and let my older version collect dust? Sadly, the answer is "yes". For those baseball fans who are lucky enough not to have yet purchased the original RBI Baseball game, go get yourself a copy of RBI Baseball 2. It is, hands down, the best overall baseball game I have seen. With all 26 major league teams and stats (plus the all-star teams), it is a must for all baseball fanatics, especially if your favorite team did well that year. This game has the best combination of everything; stats for all players, complete rosters that you set, excellent graphics and sounds, pitching rotations, and even instant replays. True baseball fans will appreciate "Tale-of-the-Tape" displays for home runs, diving stops and leaping catches that you control, and the DH rule in world series games. Players of the older version will certainly welcome the use of passwords to continue series later. The graphics and sounds have also been improved. Batters say "ouch" when beaned, runners are called "out", and with men in scoring postion the park's organist plays rally tunes. Also, the actual players look much different. They no longer resemble the big, round, "Fisher-Price" type players of the older version. Too good to be true? Well, maybe. This game isn't without its setbacks. In the one player mode, the computer is a horrendous fielder on slowly hit ground balls. Thus, it is painfully easy to turn Texas leaguers into triples and bunt singles into doubles. Also, the computer does not utilize his "lefty vs. righty" advantage with his switch hitters. However, with the 2 player game, this is not a problem and this game is top notch. Graphics/Sound: 8 Excitement: 10 (2-player mode) Manual: 9 Overall: 9 RBI Baseball 2, for the Nintendo Entertainment System, by Tengen ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Aug 90 1:57:39 PDT From:: Michel.Buffa@mirsa.inria.fr (Michel Buffa) Subject: Amiga: The Plague Another 'Sword of Sodan' type game. You control a barbarian who must explore different levels, fight with enemies, jump on platforms, climb ropes... Not very original. The game is created by Innerprise. This company employs mainly European programmers, especially the ones from Denmark. The best crackers groups and the best Amgia demos come from this country, and I'm sure that Battle Squadron's and The Plague's author are ex-crackers who decided to move on the other side. European demos are always very impressive, so are the games from Innerprise. The game has wonderful graphics and animation, gigantic sprites, and some really nice music. A top level game in terms of realization. I can't tell much more because I couldn't go very far in this game. At all. Hey ! I'm not a beginner, I finished a lot of arcade games, but this one was really a pain: The weak point of The Plague is the playability. The game is almost completely unplayable. In fact, I tried for over an hour and still couldn't reach the second level. Very frustrating, as the game looks like a real arcade one, and I really wanted to see the second level. My barbarian always died after two or three screens (The game scrolls horizontally and a little vertically, like X-OUT). So, due to the difficulty and challenge of the game, I couldn't really try out the playability at all, per se. If it is untouched for the production version, I would say that this game will end up completely unplayable and very frustrating. On the other hand, it could make an impressive demo to show to your friends... Playability: 0 (WOW !) Interest: 1 (nice demo) Graphics: 10 (very impressive, big sprites) Animation: 10 (smooth scroll and sprite movements) Music: 9 (Nice Music) Sound effects: 8 (Great atmosphere) Overall: 3 (Nice demo, frustrating game) The Plague, for the Amiga, by Innerprise (Europe) ------------------------------ From:: Michel.Buffa@mirsa.inria.fr (Michel Buffa) Subject: Amiga: (Future Titles) Flood, Unreal and Wings of Fury FLOOD The last game by the guys who made Populous, Flood is an arcade-type game. You play a small animal who can walk everywhere (even on the ceiling). It's very hard to describe (English is not my native language), but it's VERY VERY VERY GOOD. Very playable and enjoyable. I discovered a new thing each time I managed to go to the next level, new weapons, new secret doors, new strategy. This game is the most enjoyable I played these last months, up there with TURRICAN, my current favorite. The animation is ok (not as good as in TURRICAN, but it doesn't matter, since Flood uses the simplier animation well), the music is nice. In some level there are hidden passwords, so later on when you'll die, you will be able to start at the last level you reached. Overall: A GREAT GAME! Look for it when it's released! UNREAL A French game by UBI SOFT, and one hell of a game ! It's like a playable version of the game "Shadow of the Beast". Fantastic graphics and animation, with 2D and 3D parts. The 3D parts are the best one I've ever seen (if After Burner or Space Harrier used such animation techniques, they certainly would have been better). The 2D phases uses differential scrollings with 32 colours for the background and 64 for the foreground. The scrolling, the music and the animation are perfect. Playability is very good too, but the game is not for beginners. Though it's difficult, you can progress easily as there is a training mode and a lot of tricks I discovered. It's a barbarian- like game, but it's not a stupid Beat'em'up type game. Example: at one moment there is a bridge on fire; go back one screen, put your sword in the river, come back to the edge, touch the bridge with your magic sword and you pour water on the fire (you must use the four basic elements: you are a magician and you've got a magic sword that can throw water, fire, etc...) Overall: Very good game. Very well done, very playable (but not as funny and addictive as FLOOD) WINGS OF FURY The last game from Broderbrund (a very good company, remember Typhoon Thomson, Lode Runner, and their other titles?). It's an arcade flight simulator during the second World War; you control an airplane. It's a very neat game, very playable and very enjoyable. You must perform several missions like destroying DCA and invading the Japanese Islands. The game is entirely in 2D, however. The screen scrolls in both direction and there are different scale views depending on the altitude you are flying. Overall: Very good animation, sound effects and playability. Another good game! ------------------------------ Subject: PC: Drakkhen review From: jn190068@longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu (Jay Nestle) Having played the Ultima series and waiting for Ultima VI to arrive I decided to try a new adventure game, Drakkhen. Right from the box a seasoned adventurer knows this game is going to be good. The game boasts of over 200 magic spells, special character interaction, and a massive 3D world waiting to be explored. So can the game live up to its expectations? After reading the background story and the (very skimpy) instruction manual I thought I was ready to enter Drakkhen. When I got there however I found myself lost in a world without instruction. What the manual says about those 200 spells is that 23 of them are... as for the rest of the 177+ spells who knows. Then there is casting the spells acurately, there is no mention of how to position one's characters to cast or receive spells accurately. With practice and some experimen- tation it can be figured out, but why should we have to? The castles and palaces to explore are presented in excellent graphics and make just mapping them lots of fun. Beware, this is not the only thing that can be done here, there are many special rooms with gadgets to pull and push and many items to find. Although there is the option of sending each member of your party of four on their own quest it is best to stay together. The characters can move about on their own, sometimes to NO end which becomes very irritable. Finding the castles to explore is just as much fun if not more. I have never seen such realism added to an adventure game such as Drakkhen has done. From the smooth scrolling 3D graphics to the stars and mountains the Drakkhen world is very easy to "get-into". There are four different lands to explore each with their own resident background noise. For instance in the winter land one can hear the wind whistling around the frozen trees and rocks which sounds so realistic that some people may even get a chill. Remember all those irritating monsters in other adventure games that seem to never leave you alone. Drakkhen has overcome this problem by not only reducing the frequency of attacks but by creating some very, very interesting monsters. There is an assortment of everything from bats to green slime and dragons to pixies with a very large assortment of monsters that don't fit into any group. On top of all that is the animation of the monsters and don't forget that awesome stereo sound. The first time I was attacked by a howling 25 foot hell hound my blood pressure jumped! Back now to what the game is, an adventure game. Well, besides finding myself bored on occasion because I didn't know what to do because the clues to help you along are not only limited but weak, the game is lots of fun. As your characters progress levels new magic is learned which is fun but I still have to see even 24 spells. There is however many magical items such as sceptres, rings, potions, books, armor, and several types of weapons which are always fun to find and use. Although the first Drakkhen wasn't perfect I think it will be hard trying to get into another Ultima. As for the Drakkhen sequel I am anxiously awaiting its arrival! ------------------------------------- To join this group or have your reviews appear in the next issue, please send electronic mail to Dave Taylor at the following address; digital-games@digital-games.Intuitive.Com We welcome reviews of games for any computer system, including the IBM PC, Apple Macintosh, Atari, Nintendo Entertainment System, Atari Lynx, Sega Genesis, Nintendo GameBoy, NEC TurboGrafix, Amiga and so on. The views expressed in Digital Games Review Digest are those of the individual authors only, and do not represent the views or opinions of Intuitive Systems or any of our affiliates worldwide. The copyright of each article is that of the original author, and the copyright of the digest itself, as well as the name "Digital Games Review Digest" are noted here. ********************* End of Digital Games Review Digest *********************