Datasoft/U.S.Gold
48K Disk (2 disks)
£16.95
Joystick/Keyboard
1 Player
'The New Dimension in Role Playing Fantasy ... 3D
scrolling screens - combined joystick and keyboard action - original
music'. That's what the advertising blurb says. Sounds good... but
the 3D scrolling is just like in Asylum (endless mazes on a square
grid, with all the walls looking the same) and Ultima I (and we are
now waiting for Ultima IV) had combined joystick and keyboard
action. Yes, I suppose the music is original (although it is very
reminiscent of the style of Passionately), but is it all enough to
make a really good , new, exciting game?
While we are on the subject of the joystick I had better warn you
not to believe the instructions which state that the joystick is
optional. Deep inside the packaging you will find a last minute
addition - a small piece of paper saying `IMPORTANT NOTICE You need
a JOYSTICK in this game. Without a joystick, you can't exit the
Banks'. This is indeed true, and applies to numerous other
situations as well, e.g. the Healer's if the Healer is not in. This
failure to program a LEAVE command for the Bank highlights a major
failing of the game and the instructions - not enough thought has
gone into the interfaces between the game and the player and it has
not been adequately tested to ensure that it is playable. I'll come
back later to some of the games shortcomings, of which you should be
aware if you are planning to buy Alternate Reality but first let's
look at what it is all about and some of the good points.
Alternate Reality is a solo version of fairly standard Dungeons and
Dragons. The computer throws some dice to determine your Stamina, Charisma,
Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Skill, Hit Points and number of
copper coins. You then set forth to explore the City - you start in
the middle and the whole city contains about 3,800 squares for you
to explore. Well not quite that many, since you can't enter the
Palace or Arena until they produce those as later parts of the game
(the same applies to the Wilderness outside the City and the Dungeon
below it-. If we also exclude the Main Streets and Royale Walkway,
which cut great swathes across the City and are mainly shown on the
map provided with the game, that cuts it down to about 3,000 squares
to explore and attempt to map. Since the City abounds with Secret
Doors and One-Way Walls, usually in the most awkward places, trying
to create a map of the place is the second biggest challenge in the
game. Those who enjoy mazes will get plenty of fun. (Hints: Don't
waste too much time looking for Secret Doors until you have explored
around an area and have isolated some squares which appear to have
no entrance. Make a couple of photocopies of the provided map and
make sure you have a rubber handy! Practice walking along a wall and
working out it's length in grid squares - I find that if I walk
along with a wall on my left I can make out the joins between
panels. If your compass keeps getting nicked try navigating by the
sun or the distant mountains).
The biggest challenge is of course staying alive! Finding yourself
in the middle of this strange City, the first thing you do is check
your weaponry - you are immediately distressed to discover that you
have no armour and are armed with nothing better than Bare Hands!
But what is that sound over to the West? Could it be a Blacksmith
hammering and quenching? You hurry to the West and
enter a Smithy. Two diskette changes and 35 seconds later you are
rewarded with some very nice graphics of the Blacksmith hammering
away, plus some excellent music as he sings you a song - the words
flash up across one of the top lines on the screen. You check your
funds and discover you have about 200 copper pieces, you enquire
about the price of a sword and you get quite a shock when you
discover that a sword costs 12,000 copper pieces! Even a dagger
costs over 300, so you eventually decide to leave, empty handed (you
could try bargaining for the dagger, but then what would you use to
buy food, drink, lodgings and a compass?). You start to wander down
the road when suddenly the screen flashes, music sounds and you are
in the middle of an Encounter. It is a Courier. A menu appears on
the lower part of the screen, the window in the middle of the screen
(as usual full of lots of rectangular walls and buildings scrolling
past) now has a small figure in the foreground. Various letters on
the menu are flashing, offering you the chance of Hailing, Charming,
Tricking, Engaging in combat, Leaving, etc. You decide to hail this
friendly looking character and press H. You are surprised to find
yourself dealt a swift blow with a short sword - 2 Hit Points gone -
not very friendly round here are they? A for Attack - missed, Ouch!
he got you again. P for Parry - missed again, so did he. L for Lunge
- your Bare Hands have no effect. And so on... until you are dead.
Unfortunately you can't restart in any way. You have to reload the
whole game from the beginning. and that takes four minutes! (No it's
not on tape, it takes four minutes to load from diskette! - Yes, I
know you can load 48K in 48 seconds. - No I don't know what it does
for the other three minutes!)
Anyway, Alternate Reality has most of the usual
D&D elements - killing 'monsters' (i.e. anyone you meet!)
results in you gaining Experience and, if you are lucky, money,
jewels & gems (which you can sell at the bank), potions (varying
from magical through harmless to deadly poison), weapons, etc. As
your Experience increases you will suddenly find you have been
granted a higher Level, along with suitable increments in your
characteristics and Hit Points, so you can now fight bigger and
nastier monsters and, hopefully, get
bigger and better rewards, and more Experience so that you can fight
even bigger and nastier monsters and ... That's a good question,
what is the point of it all?
This is one of the flaws that I find with the game
- after playing for a couple of weeks, and establishing a level 7
character with 27,000 Experience Points, 33 Hit Points, 35,000 in
the bank, lots of weapons and potions, and twelve days experience of
living in the City, I still have no clear idea of what I'm trying to
achieve! I have mapped about 80% of the 3,000 squares, found about
70% of the establishments (Banks, Guilds, Shops, Armourers, Taverns,
Inns, Healers - even the House of Ill Repute and the Casino! -
unfortunately the two latter establishments seem to have been
permanently Closed By Order Of The Palace!), been refused entry by
seven Guilds (Red Wizards, Blue Wizards, Thieves, Order, Assassins,
and the Wizards of both Law and Chaos) on numerous occasions,
listened carefully to the songs in all the best pubs and clubs (even
those requiring you to join at extortionate cost!), and still don't
know what my objective is, assuming that there is one. Is this game
complete in itself? Or do I have to get the
next six parts in the series? Ah well, as long as one enjoys solo
D&D one can set one's own objectives until something better
comes along, like getting good enough to kill one of those Small
Green Dragons I met last night (Small? - it filled most of the
screen! (nice graphics) - best to avoid night time for your first
few days in the City!), or getting one of the Guilds to accept me as
a member.
More of the good aspects of the game. The graphics
and sound effects are all of very high standard. As the sun moves
across the sky the light changes, rain falls at times, obscuring
your view, often accompanied by thunder and lightning. The wind
howls. The amount of detail is very good in some cases. Your status,
for instance has screens for each of valuables and potions, current
weapons/armour in use, rings, miscellaneous equipment, clothing,
compass, weapons on belt and back, spells ready, active magic, work
allocation, and ailments. If you get drunk (either in a tavern, or
from drinking the wrong potion) the screen starts blacking out and
the computer reacts uncertainly to your commands - great fun!
Now to the bad news. The biggest problem is the
delays that they have built in to the program. For instance if you
buy some food in a tavern the screen flashes up 'Right away!' and
then pauses like that for five seconds - this means it takes about a
minute to buy 6 flasks of water! When you check the time at an Inn
it stays on screen for ten seconds (this is made even worse by the
fact that it takes two diskette changes and associated pauses to get
in and out of the Inn, so finding out the time actually takes nearly
a whole minute!). These, and many other, unnecessary pauses (I am
quite capable of pressing a key or button when I have finished
reading a message, thank you very much), combined with much
unnecessary diskette changes (for instance every time you try and
enter a closed establishment) nearly put me off the game completely
to start with. Initially I was waiting 15 seconds for each move in a
fight - but fortunately discovered that this is one occasion
(completely undocumented) where the space bar will cause the action
to continue, cutting the time for a fight down from 2 or 3 minutes
to a few seconds.
This major failing of intentionally wasting the
player's time is compounded by lots of silly little things that
could have been programmed better. For example, you have to hold the
joystick button down when turning a corner, you can't tell whether
you are still hungry or thirsty while in a tavern - you have to come
outside to find out (two more unnecessary diskette changes!), you
can't Pause the game while in a fight (what am I supposed to do if
the phone rings, let the computer destroy the character I spent the
last three hours building?), you can only buy a compass if you say
you are NOT interested in a shop's wares, there is no documentation
on how to use a potion if you have saved it (U for 'use' will do it
at any time in fact), despite the fact that you can Hail people,
nobody wants to talk - all they ever do is ignore you or fight you -
gets a bit predictable after a bit, and so on.
The final problem is to do with the initial
difficulty of the game and the ability to save. You CAN save your
character, but when you reload him next time you play, the 'save
data' is marked invalid so that if you die you can't reload him
again. Now if I have spent two weeks getting my character up to
level 7 and want to try him out against a Small(!) Green Dragon I am
hardly likely to want to try it without taking a backup of him. The
documentation tells you how to do this by using the Copy Utility on
Diskette Two, BUT it takes ages to do - thirty seconds for the save
plus four minutes for the game reload plus however long it takes to
back up your character. (I only use one character on a diskette - he
then only uses sectors 1 to 100 - and I can use a sector copier to
have seven different backups of him on the back of the diskette).
Since the whole point of the game is to have fun trying out new and
dangerous things it is a bit silly to make it so time consuming to
do so. The general we're- only- here- to- fight attitude of the
game, together with the difficulty of 'saving' makes it very
difficult to get anywhere to start with, and may well put off some
of the less persevering games players, while the apparent lack of
problems to solve (apart from staying alive and mapping I haven't
found any thing to tax the old grey matter yet) may dissuade those
who initially persevere from continuing.
Still, this is only the first in the series. Maybe
if the authors listen to some of the feedback and give a bit more
consideration to the playability of the game, subsequent modules of
the game may be better, and Alternate Reality may earn its place on
the shelves beside Ultima. If AR III is as much an improvement on
ARl as Ultima III was on Ultima I then WOW!!!
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