74 lines
4.0 KiB
Plaintext
74 lines
4.0 KiB
Plaintext
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REALM OF THE WARLOCK
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The elders of Ashton have vanished. Trouble and strife now rule the
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countryside. You, veteran of many previous (and similar-sounding?) adventures,
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decide to exorcise this wasteland you once called home and return the elders to
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Ashton.
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This graphics adventure designed by Michael Raybaud and James Smith (reviewed
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here for the Amiga) was the first game released by Incognito Software. And they
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are admittedly embarrassed by it. I was told by someone at the company that if
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they hadn't been contractually obligated to release it, REALM OF THE WARLOCK
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might have disappeared as utterly as the old guys from Ashton.
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That would have been a shame, since it does have something to recommend it: the
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puzzles. In this new age where storyline and characterization are becoming
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increasingly important, direct descendants of COLOSSAL CAVE, ZORK, WIZARD AND
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THE PRINCESS, and others are much harder to find. Puzzles are all this game has
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on its mind, and there are plenty of them. Out of the approximately fifty
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locations you'll visit, only half a dozen or so are window dressing. The rest
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offer obstacles, clues, or necessary objects.
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Many of the puzzles are connected. Every object is important. Some are needed
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to perform several different functions. Since you can only carry six items at a
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time, and since you'll be unable to return to earlier portions of the game after
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certain crucial junctures, inventory management is a juggling act of major
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proportions.
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The puzzles are made all the harder by the illogic of many of them. And whil
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there are clues scattered about, they can be as cryptic, or as hard to find, as
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the actual solutions themselves. You must try everything everywhere (Experiment!
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Experiment! Experiment!) in order to succeed.
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Also, to the game's credit, it can be loaded entirely into RAM -- that is, if
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you have 1MB or more available. WARLOCK offers a number of shortcut macros, and
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the ability to chain together a series of directional commands to move you
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quickly across its landscape. It will save games to a second disk drive,
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although the documentation doesn't reveal this. Just type the designator of your
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second drive (DF1:, DF2:, etc.) before the filename under which you want to save
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the game.
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Phone support was prompt and friendly. And the game even begins with an
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anti-drug message in an unexpected display of social conscience.
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Why would Incognito want to disown such a challenging game? There _is_ a
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definite downside. First of all, the parser is limited and cranky. Secondly, the
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game's text strings are full of distracting typos, misspellings, and
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illiteracies of every sort. This combination can be deadly when, at one poin the
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program only accepts a command that's an incorrect use of the language. Room
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descriptions are often confused with characters inhabiting the rooms, resulting
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in the display of some very bizarre text. And every time you save a game, you
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get the message "Gave Saved." (Sigh.)
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WARLOCK's graphics are crudely drawn, almost childlike, and of little help in
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solving the puzzles. They can be turned off, and this is essential at a couple
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points where the text scrolls right out of the window before you can read it.
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There is no sound. There appear to be several bugs that can crash the game. The
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only one that is repeatable is acknowledged by Incognito, but there are no plans
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to fix it. The correct input is necessary to get you past it.
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The packaging stuffs the disk up against a cheap slab of crumbling styrofoam
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that can jam it, or your drive. Clean the disk thoroughly before use!
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So, the bottom line has to be this: If you are looking for an extremely
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challenging, puzzle-oriented graphics adventure, and _if_ you can put up with
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the annoying idiosyncrasies of the parser, text, and overall design, you might
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want to give REALM OF THE WARLOCK a try. But if your irritation threshold is
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low, beware.
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REALM OF THE WARLOCK is published by Incognito Software.
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*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253
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