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Level
9
64K Tape (XL/XE only)
£9.95
1 Player
Keyboard
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The Worm in Paradise completes Level 9's Silicon
Dream Trilogy. The previous two parts, Snowball and Return to Eden,
set a high standard for cassette based adventures. I am glad to say
that the third part appears to be even better than the first two.
Level 9 have continued to develop their adventure system, the game
has optional graphics (admittedly fairly simple line drawings, but
quite colourful and drawn very fast) and multi-tasking of picture
drawing, text output, and keyboard input. This means that you don't
have to wait for the computer to finish what it is doing before you
can type your next command. You just keep keying as fast as you can
- on this point they are even better than Infocom! They have also
enhanced the game's ability to understand English. "EXAMINE ALL
BUT THE HELMET, DUMMY AND LEOTARD AND GO EAST" is an example.
The game opens with "As the game starts, you
can remember nothing. Most odd. You are in the Northwest corner of a
garden paradise, protected by a high wall up which flowers climb.
Bright butterflies flutter on the balmy breeze and skylarks sing
overhead." OK, so here's the Paradise - where's the Worm? It
shouldn't take you long to find it! And when you do you will fid the
land outside the wall is not a bit like Paradise - scarred hills and
a desolate countryside, full of thorn bushes and sand dunes. But
don't worry about it if you don't find the Worm. Whether you do or
not you will soon wake up anyway to discover that you were only
dreaming. So on with the main part of the game.
You are a citizen of Enoch, megopolis of Eden.
Your first problem is to map your way around Level 9's usual vast
areas (200 plus) and learn how to negotiate all the one-way roads
and roundabouts. This is made especially
difficult in this game by the fact that the place is run by some
very officious robots. All around you you will see uniformed
citizens, speeding droids, and, unfortunately, too many fuzbots. The
fuzbots are liable to fine you for
just about anything you do, from the apparently innocuous - like
carrying your badge instead of wearing it - to the more obvious -
like breaking curfew or appearing nude in public! It is definitely
not a friendly place! Since your funds are extremely limited, you
are highly likely to end up in debt, whereupon you are carted away
to the body bank, where you may sell your spare organs for credit!
Those who have played Return to Eden will
recognise the Theme Park - it covers the area from the Shore of
Death (no I haven't found a ticket for the Riverboat yet in this
game!) and the Little House on the Prairie (now selling revolting
pies) to the Old Curiosity Shop and Ancient Lankhmar. Likewise,
those who have played Snowball will recognise the colour coding
system of the One-Armed Bandit and the Eden Transport System. The
latter has three main areas, each apparently serving one million
dwellings! Movement around it is by no means obvious either, as you
move from one location with a seven colour code to another with a
different, seemingly unrelated seven-colour code - but don't despair
- it IS all logical and you CAN calculate an optimum route from one
place to another. Mind you, with a choice of three million
destinations, you had better know where you want to go! Trial and
error is NOT recommended!
Your objective is to find out about the City of
Enoch and progress within it, and of course to save the world (yet
again!). Just how to go about this is not obvious. The Worm in
Paradise is definitely not for the beginner. Assuming you have found
the Worm, you can explore about 95 locations without solving any
problems at all (plus the Eden Transport system and its 3,000,000
destinations if you want to!) but what then? There don't appear to
be many clues. After many hours and much thought I have amassed
about a quarter of the points, but it is hard work all the way. If
you like adventures and are looking for a challenge, then you should
definitely give this one a go.
The only criticism I would make is that the
program's understanding of English is not as good as they claim.
"The most advanced English ever understood by a cassette-based
game" MAY be true. But "copes with a wider range of
English sentences than any other game we've seen" presumably
means that they have never seen an Infocom game!
Sequences
like:
SEARCH -
"that verb needs an object"
SEARCH
ROOM - "room: dunno where it is"
SEARCH CRACK - "Dunno that verb"
can hardly
be considered very friendly. Does it know the word SEARCH or not?
Likewise:
TURN NOZZLE - "You can't use the word 'turnstile' like
that"
What is that supposed to mean? They claim 1000 plus word vocabulary.
I think what they have done is allow the program to compare any
input with all of the descriptive text, and pretend to understand it
if it finds a match (hence 'turn' becomes 'turnstile'). They then
can randomly reply "that's nothing special", "ignore
it" or "that's just scenery" to 90% of your input. I
suspect the USEFUL vocabulary is more like the couple of hundred
words we are used to from Level 9. Personally I much prefer a
program to be honest and admit when it doesn't understand a word. It
makes it much more enjoyable to play. Similarly sequences
like:
WEAR
BROOCH - "You can't wear that"
PUT BROOCH ON TRADCLADS - "You can't put it there"
FASTEN BROOCH TO TRADCLADS - "OK"
are rather annoying (especially when FASTEN FLAG TO TRADCLADS gets
the same response of "You can't PUT it there"!). Is it
lack of thought on their part? Or just a desire to make us play
guessing games?
But don't get me wrong. It is an excellent
adventure in its class. It is impossible to equal the best of the
diskette games while using cassette, simply because you have more
limits placed on you by the medium - mind you, a lot of
diskette-based adventure writers could learn a lot from Level 9.
I am sure that we will get lots more enjoyment
from Level 9 in the future, especially if they can get over these
delusions of grandeur, (and make their parser a little bit more
honest!)
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