& LIGHT-YEARS! - TRS-80 Color Computer Archive

etween the desire to put a lot of
information into the game—especially
when you're conversing with game
characters—and the problem of
putting huge amounts of text into
memory and onto the tiny screen.
Buiter has put the text into a book of
"paragraphs." When you encounter
the right character in the game, you
are referred to the book to find out
what he says.
The paragraphs are believable di
alogue, very well written (a rarity in
games; compare it with the embarrass
ingly bad writing in the Ultima series,
for instance). To keep you from cheating and reading the
paragraphs ahead, there are false clues; if you're peeking,
you'll end up on wild goose chases that accomplish
nothing.
Your sensors immediately peg strangers as hostile or
friendly. You can talk to the friendlies and can only fight
with or flee from the hostiles. Not too subtle (don't you
wish you had a machine like that?), but it's better than just
killing anything that moves.
Some of the world creation is medium-dumb: a planet
where there are only two seasons—at every latitude? And
Buiter has a rather lackluster sense of naming; he puts lots
of unpronounceable letters together to fake alienness in
stead of developing the sense of a linguistic tradition.
But the game world is big enough to accommodate dif
ferent experiences, and it doesn't force you into set pat
terns. You can explore randomly, having the adventures
you want to have. I call it the best of the space adventure
games, and it placed high on Geoffrey's list as well.
Firezone
This simple futuristic war game has beautiful graphics and
simple, intuitive controls. If you've ever played a war game
before, you can literally start to play Firezone the moment
it comes onto the screen. This was obviously one of the
game designer's goals: The directions include Quickstart
Creating Characters
Most games that let you assemble a group of characters to take
part in your adventures follow the role-playing pattern set years
ago by the paper game Dungeons & Dragons. Your characters
are different from each other because they have a range of abil
ities. Some have a great deal of strength but aren't too bright.
Some have considerable dexterity and quickness, but they're
quite frail and can't withstand much injury.
Strengths in one area mean weaknesses in another—no
one character has it all. Thus all the characters in your party are
necessary to overcome obstacles and accomplish your goals.
Most of these games follow that basic pattern, but with vari
ations. Sentinel Worlds, for instance, lets you choose faces for
your characters from a group of pictures. Star Flight and Star
Command require you to put your characters through training
before they become reliable in using their skills. Star Command
amusingly takes you through the ups and downs of your charac
ters' education until they finally get good enough to bring along
on your adventure.
Most games use the standard ability groups: strength,
dexterity, intelligence, and endurance. Star Command adds
Esper ability, which serves the role that magical ability serves in
fantasy games. Star Flight uses categories that apply to specific
jobs on your starship: Characters train in areas like medicine,
32 COMPUTEI
instructions for those who don't want
to bother with thick rule books.
Yet despite its simplicity,
Firezone is fascinating, with infinite
choices in both strategy and tactics. If
you play alone, the computer is a
tough but fair opponent. If you play
head to head with someone else, you
can play the same scenario again with
vastly different results. And the game
includes a construction set, so you can
devise more scenarios—though you
won't soon tire of the ones that come
with the game.
This could have been a World
War II simulation; setting it in the future adds little, except
that the designer avoids the standard villains. There's none
of this us-against-the-Nazis or us-against-the-commies stuff.
As science fiction, the game isn't much, but it's still a
fine war game. It is Geoffrey's absolute favorite.
Star Command
This game wants to be Star Flight or Sentinel Worlds, but
it isn't. The setup phase is tedious and too detailed, though
there are touches of wit in training crew members.
It isn't just the primitive graphics; the look of the game
is certainly adequate, and the screen communicates well.
And there's some decent invention in the scenario. The
problem is that there's no sense of experiencing anything.
Mostly you're told about what's going on, and after a short
time it seemed to me that it was a text game which con
sisted of getting assignments from mission control and
mechanically going out. doing them, and coming back. I
wasn't having fun. Geoffrey did find it playable, though it
isn't high on his list.
Wasteland
This game owes a lot to the Ultima series of fantasy games.
You move through a map of post-nuclcar-holocaust Amer
ica, entering surface villages and underground dungeons.
The world creation is interesting and fun—not just jokes
languages, navigation, engineering, and science.
The benefit of this is that you get the sense that you're
playing with well-drawn individual characters. You begin to feel
that you know them personally; you're responsible for keeping
them from getting killed. The drawback is that spending too
much time creating the characters and manipulating them
through the game becomes extremely tedious.
This is particularly true in the area o! weapons and armor.
Maybe some players really enjoy dressing up their characters
like dolls. Star Command has more weapons options than I ever
wanted. But if you're someone who cares about the difference
between an LTV Ranger Seeker Missile and an SS-29 Bulldog
Missile, go for it.
I prefer the approach of Firezone: The game's choices are
few, but those choices differ significantly. This is no more limit
ing than, say, chess, with only a few kinds of pieces that never
theless allow almost infinite possibilities.
And Wasteland, with its full cast of interesting characters,
lets you skip character generation altogether. You can use the
existing characters and get right into the game, or, if you prefer,
you can start from scratch and create your own. I like having
that choice.