Magnetic Scrolls/Rainbird
XL/XE 64K Disk
Price £19.99
If you have any interest at all in adventures then you will almost
certainly have heard of The Pawn already (unless you have been stuck
down a really nasty dungeon for the last year!). The ST version of
it was released last year amidst a great flurry of advertising
praising its wonderful graphics and "revolutionary text-handling
system which allows input of complicated sentences and complete
interaction with characters". It is now available for the XL/XE but
the bad news is that the graphics aren't as good on the 800 XL as on
the ST, and that its understanding of English isn't quite as good as
they would like us to think (I tried some 'complete interaction'
with the Princess and it didn't understand at all, still I suppose
it IS intended to be a family game!!)
The inferiority of the graphics is, to be fair, the
hardware's fault and in fact the graphics are very good for an 800
XL – if you stand back from the pictures they are really quite
impressive. There is also an excellent facility for scrolling the
pictures smoothly up the screen with the SELECT key, so that you can
use as much of the screen as you want for text. And there is plenty
of text.
The
descriptions of locations, artifacts and people, the results of your
actions, and the responses to your attempts to converse with the
many inhabitants of the game, all give you plenty of interesting and
often amusing text. The text within the game is further supplemented
by the fifty page booklet which comes with the game and details the
background to it. 'A Tale of Kerovnia' introduces you to many of the
characters in the adventure, including the King and his daughter,
Kronos the Wizard and his pet dragon, Harry (who is supposed to be
afraid of people – but didn't seem so when I met him!), and Gringo
Baconburger, a dwarf who hopes to overthrow the King by democratic
means!
'The plot unfolds
slowly and deviously'
You start the game on The Path. Initially you have no
idea of what your objective is, but if you wander around the
immediately accessible area you will soon discover plenty to do.
Getting rid of the annoying Silver Wristband which has appeared on
your arm, finding a way to persuade the guards to let you into the
palace, and working out how to get Honest John to part with some of
his goods, are just a few of the goals you will soon set for
yourself. And various characters will probably have jobs for you as
well, assuming you can persuade Kronos to stop flying away on his
stone platform long enough to have a chat, or the Guru to stop
laughing so that you can get a word in edgeways!
The plot unfolds slowly and deviously. New characters
appear, and you slowly find ways of reaching new and intriguing
places. There are plenty of interesting problems to solve and most
of them are pretty logical. The game gets especially nasty when you
discover that there are multiple ways of solving some of the
problems, and also multiple uses for certain single-use artifacts!
Choosing the right route to take through all this is
not at all easy. You are aided here by two things. Firstly you
should keep your eye on your score. It appears random as to whether
it updates this on the move when you deserve it or on the next move.
If you think you just did something clever but got no score for it,
then perform some simple command (I or L) to check the real score.
Secondly you can Save and Restore quite efficiently. Note that even
though the documentation states that the Save Files are not in DOS
format, the diskette must have been formatted by DOS, and to
enhanced density, sorry – did I forget to mention that you must have
a 1050 diskette drive to play this game?
Once I had finally sorted out all the devious red
herrings and subplots, and achieved the prime objective which I had
set myself, and even encountered a character who told me he was
going to celebrate my finishing the game, I thought perhaps I had
finished, but I had nowhere near the full score. I did a few more
things I knew about which gave me more points, however I was now
completely stuck. I read all the cypheric hints in the back of the
book, but I still couldn't get the last few points. I have since
found out how to get the full score (yes! – it is possible), but the
game still doesn't end in any obvious way. I enjoy the feeling you
get when you get the final message from a game and know that you
have well and truly succeeded and definitely completed it. I still
haven't found one in the Pawn – if YOU do please let me know!
Apart from that minor disappointment and a couple of
little bugs (e.g. always GET anything before you UNTIE it or it may
disappear forever!), my only real criticism is that it doesn't
really understand as much as one might expect from the advertising.
During a conversation it will attempt to respond meaningfully to any
old garbage so you can't tell whether it understands or not. It is a
trifle inconsistent in demanding additional information – e.g. if
you say UNLOCK THE DOOR it asks WITH WHAT? and responds similarly
for giving, buying and numerous other activities, but there are some
sentences which appear quite correct and reasonable, and which are
critical to finishing the game, to which it instead responds with
phrases such as 'YOU CAN'T DO THAT TO THE ...' or 'I DON'T FOLLOW
YOU' when it should, to be consistent and fair, respond with 'TO
WHAT' or 'WITH WHAT' or 'ON WHAT', or at the very least give a
sensible response which might encourage you to try and experiment
further in that direction. I occasionally found that the responses
to certain requests were actually incorrect, either grammatically or
just plain wrong - I think these are mainly attributable to its
attempts to respond to sentences even when it doesn't really
understand either all the words in the sentence or the grammatical
construction you have used. It assumes full stops which you don't
want (e.g. GO NORTHEAST WITH THE WHEELBARROW gets turned into two
commands).
'The Pawn's
ability to understand . . . is truly amazing'
The end result of all this is that the poor
adventurer can occasionally have solved a problem but not be able to
get the computer to understand what he wants to do - the game
degenerates into trying to guess how the computer wants the request
phrased. In general, however, The Pawn's ability to understand and
respond correctly to some extremely complicated sentences is truly
amazing and a demonstration of the game by someone who knows its
capabilities could, I am sure, be a very impressive demonstration of
Artificial Intelligence. Unfortunately the qualities which enable
good demonstrations are not necessarily those required for good
playing! Please don't misunderstand -the game really is excellent -
just be aware that if you are stuck it may be the game's fault and
not yours!
Other excellent features of the game include: the ability to key
ahead; the ability to recall the last command, change it or correct
an error in it, and resubmit it; excellent responses for a game of
this sophistication; impeccable packaging, including a twelve page
booklet on how to interact with the game; very few spurious
locations and lots of fun - do examine the rats in the fountain!
For a company's first release to be so good shows
great potential. If Magnetic Scrolls can keep up this level of
quality then we should all look forward to their next adventure -
The Guild of Thieves -with great relish. I thoroughly enjoyed The
Pawn, despite a few minor frustrations, and have no hesitation in
recommending it as excellent value for money.
P.S. Loved the maze!
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