56 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
56 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
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THE USURPER: THE MINES OF QYNTARR
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Remember the thrill you felt the first time you played ZORK I? Well, you won't
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find that repeated here. At this point in the development of all-text
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adventures, a game really has to offer something new in the way of setting,
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puzzles, or concept -- and I'm afraid that Sir-Tech's THE USURPER: THE MINES OF
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QYNTARR (MOQ) just isn't up to snuff. This review is based on the IBM version of
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the game.
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Your mission is to descend into (yet another) improbably huge cavern, collect
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items, fight beasts, risk certain death, and manage your inventory. Somewhere
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below is the object that will enable you to defeat the tyrant.
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Sorry, but we've seen all this before. When you go into a hut and the first
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things you find are a saber and a lantern, you just know you're treading on
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familiar ground. You will locate many items and many rooms in what is a very
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large, but not particularly interesting, dungeon.
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The adventure is generally easy. When you enter a room filled with poisonous
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gas, and later you find a gas mask nearby, it doesn't take an Einstein to figur
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out what to do. Yet there are other puzzles for which the solution seems totally
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random. For example, there is a subway from one part of the game to another, but
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it's a one-way trip. I searched everywhere, did everything, examined everything
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(twice), and finally gave up and called the Sir-Tech Hint Hotline. What they
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told me to do bore absolutely no logical relation to transportation,
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teleportation, or (most important) cogitation. Let me give you an example,
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without giving anything away: If a game took you into a deep well whose ladder
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back up was out of your grasp, would it make sense that the only way to return
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to the surface would be to wear a hat? The solution to the subway puzzle is at
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that level.
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The dungeon is chock full of items, over half of which will gain you points but
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play no part whatsoever in solving puzzles. This not only made inventory
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management a nightmare, it also became tiresome after a while. ("Oh no! Not
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another giant ruby!")
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MOQ's "bigger is better" philosophy does not work. Most rooms just serve as a
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passage from one place to another. Most items serve as "treasures" without
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purpose, and aren't hard to obtain. The game has little wit, a fairly stiff
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parser, and compares unfavorably in terms of difficulty and originality with
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several of the user-written text adventures available in CompuServe's Gamers'
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Forum file library.
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MOQ (written by Scott Thoman) comes with both IBM and Apple // series disks in
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one box, and can be installed on hard disk. No other versions for other
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computers are planned. In spite of the fact that the game is billed as "Book One
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of the Mines of Qyntarr," and there is a listing for "Future USURPER Releases"
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in the manual's Table of Contents, no future installments in this series are
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currently planned. Frankly, I'm not surprised.
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THE USURPER: THE MINES OF QYNTARR is published and distributed by Sir-Tech
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Software.
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*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253
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