FemaleDeer's Comp97 Reviews - Pt I
FemaleDeer
FemaleDeer's Reviews
Due to illness I was unable to finish playing all the games. So the only
reviews I have are for Inform games. This is NOT because I have anything
against Tads (or others), but because I started playing the Inform games first
because I felt I was better able to judge the programming since I am an Inform
programmer. Then when I became ill and was unable to proceed on.
My reviews were originally longer, but I have abbreviated them to post.
They are also based on only two hours of play -- since I tried to use
hints infrequently, I did not get very far in two hours.
Due to some modem difficulties I made have to make this several postings.
In this section - Bear, Cask, Edifice
Inform Games - Alphabetically by File Name
Bear - Cute. Cute being a teddy bear and well-written and well-programmed.
However, I ended up feeling that this game was just a series of puzzles
stringed together. I decided the reason I felt that way was because the plot
was not "important" enough to "motivate" me to REALLY want to find things
for the picnic. A nice try, but not that fun, despite the author's intention.
Cask - An Inform Exercise. At at least that is the way it felt. Basically
a one puzzle (with subpuzzles) game in a limited location. There was
nothing intriguing here, no plot, no motivation to hook me into keeping on
playing to solve it. Also, the player can die quite often, without warning.
Edifice - Unique. I ranked this the highest of the games I played. Yes, there
are problems, some of the commands are tricky, maybe a help screen listing
possible commands would help. And some of the puzzles are not as clear as they
could be. But it is an unusual scenario and the author also accomplished
something I felt was unique. He made the puzzles integral to the story, they
did not feel "added on" (as obstacles), at all, they felt "crucial" to the
story, in fact, they "were" the story. This game has almost a "seamlessness"
between puzzles and story and that I have rarely seen, in ANY game,
so despite some (correctable) problems, I gave it top marks.
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Femal...@aol.com "Good breeding consists in
concealing how much we think of ourselves and how
little we think of the other person." Mark Twain
Joe Mason
In article <19980104232...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
FemaleDeer <femal...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>Bear - Cute. Cute being a teddy bear and well-written and well-programmed.
>However, I ended up feeling that this game was just a series of puzzles
>stringed together. I decided the reason I felt that way was because the plot
>was not "important" enough to "motivate" me to REALLY want to find things
>for the picnic. A nice try, but not that fun, despite the author's intention.
(You may notice that I'm not posting my own reviews; instead, I'm just
responding to other people's. I don't mean to sound argumentative with any
of the other reviewers - I only tend to respond when I have a differing
opinion, since otherwise what I want to say has already been said.)
I thought that Bear's plot was pretty motivating. At first I had fun just
exploring, and I don't tend to like "exploring" games (well, with some
exceptions - I loved exploring Spring). And as soon as I saw the note that
tells you your objective I thought, "Woohoo!" It's actually surprising how
far into character I got - normally that kind of thing wouldn't grab me at
all.
Joe
(Trying, perhaps pointlessly, to be vague)