IFReviewed by
Bob Davis on 2006-05-06 01:25
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
Difficulty Rating: 10
Special Features: 10 directions
Extra Commands: Save
Playing Time: 4 ½ hours
You have once again been chosen to perform a great deed in the 35th century. Since your successful assassination of the Krell emperor, much
progress has been made in liberating Earth’s former space colonies, but
the fighting is bitter and the advances slow. A Krell scientist, Mordir
Kang, has developed a doomsday device – the Zontar ray machine. This
ray machine generates an anti-matter field which, when it touches
matter, produces a dimensional inversion, sucking matter into the 8th
dimension with cataclysmic results. Your mission is to locate Mordir
Kang’s secret base, kill him, steal the plans to the ray machine, and
destroy the device.
I first started playing this adventure with
a wimpy guy and lasted 15 minutes. Well, says I, a hardier character is
needed. How about the Mad Haranguer, hardiness 23, agility 28, charisma
16 – dead in 30 minutes. Uh-oh. Methinks this calls for drastic
measures; in from the Stone-age walks Fred, hardiness 32, agility 17,
charisma 4. (What he likes in speed, he makes up for in good-looks.)
Between
getting lost in the desert, getting lost in the jungle, getting lost in
the swamp (Fred isn’t the greatest with directions) and having the
entire Krell empire after his buns with weapons ranging from rocket
launchers to missiles (alas, poor Fred has a rock, a club, and a big
stick), Fred decided he wasn’t having a very good day. If it weren’t
for luck, a few tricks of Eamon and an altered heal spell, Fred would
have been back in the Stone-ages as a fossil.
This adventure
kept my interest during play, always having to get out of a tight
situation. Some special effects are present, most notably the SAY
command which is used to activate machines. Interaction with these
machines is sometimes quite interesting.
I do have a couple of
“gripes” with the adventure. The short descriptions do not have
directions in them so when a room is re-entered, a LOOK must be done to
find the exits (unless you can keep flawless maps). The names of the
monsters are not in the long descriptions so something must be done
(such as trying to leave) to get the short descriptions to print
without getting attacked first. And last, but most frustrating of all,
the POWER routine is unchanged from the original MAIN PGM (i.e. you
hear sonic booms, tunnels collapse, the dead are brought back to life,
and all wounds are healed. Realizing these may be personal pet peeves,
I did not take them into consideration when rating the dungeon.
Overall,
this is tough adventure. Not so much tough in problem solving as tough
in surviving. One hint because I think you’ll need it: an XM-68x device
will heal you once you acquire it, however it has a limited number of
uses. This is indicated by a warning message that the unit is beginning
to short-circuit. I discovered by method of flawless deduction, that I
could perform a certain technical adjustment (not documented in the
owner’s manual) by using normal standard commands that would remedy
this problem as often as needed. Good luck!
Used with Matthew Clark's kind permition.
Original review available at Eamon Adventurer's Guild Online website.
