Fantastic Four
featuring the Human Torch and the Thing
Scott Adams/Adventure International/All American Adventures
48k Disk
£14.95
I used to enjoy Scott Adams' adventures,
but, rather sadly, they seem to have been left behind by the other
main adventure producers like Level 9 and Infocom. It is not really
fair to compare them with Infocom since they are designed to fit
into a 64K memory (apart from the pictures), but Level 9's
adventures are written with the same constraints as Scott Adams',
and they get better all the time. Questprobe 3 seems, if anything,
inferior to the earlier adventures in the series.
With the pictures turned off, Questprobe 1 (The Hulk) normally gave
sub-second responses. The Fantastic Four has a three to four second
response - what went wrong? (It gets even worse if you WAIT - the
command WAIT 15 takes 30 seconds to do nothing!)
A response
time of a few seconds can be quite acceptable, it is, for instance,
quite common in Infocom adventures, but the difference there is that
you know it is going to be worth waiting for the response. This,
alas, is not true of The Fantastic Four. 99% of the responses from
the adventure are: 'I see nothing special' (even single word
descriptions of a few things would be nice), 'I don't know what xxxx
means' (even for a word like PRINCESS, which is listed in its
vocabulary!) and 'I didn't completely understand you' (you get this
for even the simplest of sentences, e.g. OPEN DOOR - both of which
are listed in its vocabulary - and this is the same door, in the
Chief Examiner's office, which you COULD attempt to open in The
Hulk!). But it gets even worse.
The adventure starts with the Thing stuck in a tar pit and the Torch
nearby. You can switch between the two characters by typing in
SWITCH. I flew the Torch over the pit and tried to get him to lift
the Thing out. This didn't seem to be working so I checked the
documentation, which is quite extensive giving long descriptions of
the various heroes and villains in the story. Sure enough, the Thing
weighs 500 lbs, and the Torch can get 'enough lift to carry around
180 pounds. By forming a jet from his feet, directed behind him, he
can achieve speeds of up to 140 miles per hour'. This sounded like
it might be enough to jerk the Thing free from the tar, so I typed
in TURN ON JET - 'I don't know how to BEGIN something' - huh? I said
TURN not BEGIN, and TURN is listed in the vocabulary! So I tried
BECOME JET -'OK', but all it did was switch me to being, the Thing.
It would appear that BECOME is a synonym for SWITCH, and it just
ignored the word JET completely. This is hardly what one expects of
a company which has been producing adventures since the beginning!
Anyway, I gave up trying to rescue the Thing that way, but did
eventually discover how to save him from drowning in the tar pit. I
also explored around the place a bit with the Torch and discovered
how to work the cannon. After a few hours I had still found very few
locations, and extremely few artifacts (three to be precise). I was
getting bored. I had now reached a point in the game where the Thing
is stuck at the bottom of a shaft. Now the instructions say 'Your
computer is able to understand long, complex sentences such as
"CLIMB ALL THE WAY UP THE SHAFT"'. That sounded just right for my
current problem so I typed it in. After my previous experiences with
the game's inability to understand the simplest of English, I
shouldn't have been surprised when it responded 'Your sentence has
too many elements for me to understand. Please simplify it.' (Can we
do them for false advertising?)
One final complaint - how come it can understand GIVE CANDLE TO
THING, but not GIVE CANDLE TO RINGMASTER? I don't mind if he doesn't
want it, but anything would be preferable to seeing 'I didn't
completely understand you' appear on the screen yet AGAIN! There is
absolutely no point in having a vast vocabulary of hundreds of
words, unless you program the game to understand a few more
sentences than those absolutely required to complete the game. It
just becomes a guessing game as to which is the only valid sentence
you can use in the current situation. This, combined with the
atrocious response times for such a primitive adventure, results in
what I can only describe as a disappointing and boring game.
It's got some pretty pictures - if you don't mind waiting while they
load.
top
