textfiles/games/REVIEWS/altered.rev

 ALTERED DESTINY

 ALTERED DESTINY is a graphic adventure designed by Michael Berlyn, who has
written several Infocom classics, including INFIDEL and SUSPENDED. This game is
the second adventure from Accolade, and it uses the same engine as their first,
SEARCH FOR THE KING, which explains the similarities in the look and feel of the
two games. However, the story line and puzzle quality of ALTERED DESTINY make it
a better game than SEARCH FOR THE KING. (This review is based on the IBM-PC
version.)

 You are P.J. Barrett, a middle manager in some unnamed company. Your only plan
for the weekend is to pick up your TV from the shop on the way home and enjoy a
quiet night of tube watching with your significant other, Trudy. However, a
little mixup at the repair shop results in your bringing home the TV that
belongs to some ancient warrior type of guy! After turning on the TV while Trudy
changes clothes, your plans are rudely interrupted as you get sucked through the
screen into a strange world: your altered destiny. You quickly find out that
someone named Helmar has stolen the jewel of light, and that this alien world is
on the brink of a catastrophe. Your goal is obvious: to right all that is wrong.

 I found ALTERED DESTINY extremely difficult in the beginning. I did a lot of
wandering around, LOOKing at everything and trying to gather clues by reading
all the descriptions carefully, which got me nowhere fast. After guessing at
(and solving) a few puzzles, it occurred to me that the clues were there, but
most of them were visual instead of verbal! In other words, to succeed in this
game, you have to pay careful attention to the scenery and the animation
sequences. With that in mind, I have to say that the puzzles are by and large
fair, although there are still a couple I consider pretty far-fetched. I must
admit that I needed a hint to solve one of them, and the other triggered a fatal
bug that I'll describe later.

 A lot of the puzzles are nonlinear; they can be solved in any sequence.
However, be aware that there are possible dead ends in this game, situations in
which (if you do not have the necessary items with you) you will be stuck, and
"restore" will be the only way out. I have a complaint concerning the text
responses that occur when you try something inappropriate. Some of these
responses imply that the action is either not possible anywhere in the game, or
that it's simply not the right thing to do. Such implications can turn out to be
very misleading. For example, when I tried to pour something, the program kept
telling me that I'd be making a mess, and it wouldn't let me pour; I concluded
that pouring was therefore a futile action in this game. Yet later, the exact
same action led to the solution of a puzzle. The program did not object at that
point, even though the objection was still logically applicable. Another example
involved climbing. When I first tried to climb something, the game told me "You
won't get anywhere climbing that." Yet, after moving a few steps on the same
screen and trying to climb the exact same thing again, voila! I did get
somewhere! Players who believe the game responses (as they should) will be
stumped for hours, trying to solve the puzzles some other way.

 The parser is adequate and seems to have improved since SEARCH FOR THE KING.
Aside from one puzzle (involving capturing a creature) that requires almost
exact wording (which is not difficult to guess once you discern the right clue),
I experienced little problem with the parser.

 Inventory management adds to the challenge of the game. You can only carry
about half a dozen items, an unusual feature in recent adventure games. Players
are well-advised to designate a convenient location as their rendezvous point,
and leave their items there till needed.

 There are no arcade sequences per se in this game, but take my advice: Save the
game frequently, especially while crossing the seemingly endless screens of the
Canyon of Fear. This is a series of screens of narrow paths along a steep
canyon. You have to manually maneuver your character most of the way, using a
mouse or arrow keys. One false click or tap of the key, and it is curtains for
P.J. Playing this part of the game with the keyboard is most frustrating.
Depending on where your character is standing, tapping the correct arrow key
once does not always start him walking. So when you're in a tight spot and hit
the key twice to try to take a step and stop, you may have actually walked P.J.
to his death. Let's hope playing with a mouse makes this easier. Aside from
accidental falling deaths, there are many other unsuspecting ways to die. I did
not find these other ways to heaven too offensive, mostly because the story was
set in an alien world filled with new and unfamiliar dangers.

 The world envisioned by Mr. Berlyn in his design of the game is truly bizarre,
with eerie landscapes populated by fascinating beings and strange creatures and
plants. The graphics attempt to bring this world to life, but unfortunately, I
think they fall short of their goal. I played the game in the VGA enhanced mode,
and even then, I found the graphics a bit chunky, and color selections could
have been better. The spot animations are nicely done, but nothing spectacular.
Other recent games, such as QUEST FOR GLORY and THE SECRETS OF MONKEY ISLAND,
feature better looking graphics and smoother animations.

 The version of ALTERED DESTINY that I played had several bugs. In two scenes, I
was able to walk all over the top part of the screen, and even walk off the
screen entirely and return. (This bug also occurred in SEARCH FOR THE KING.) At
one point in the game, after boarding a transport, I saved the game after the
transport began to move. When I restored the game, my character disappeared, and
I had to go back to an earlier saved game to retrace my steps. There's one fatal
bug that will cause the final playable scene to hang, forcing you to reboot. If
this happens to you, you'll have to replay the game where you just arrive at
Castle Island. There is a puzzle here which causes you to die if not solved
properly. A bug in my version allowed me to escape without really solving it the
way the game expected, and it caused the program to hang later. Accolade has
made a patch available to fix this problem.

 There are numerous musical passages in the game that add a lot to the
atmosphere, and emphasize the feeling that you're indeed in another world. I
played the entire game with the music piped through my AdLib sound card, and I
never got bored or irritated by it.

 This version runs on the IBM PC, XT, AT, and compatibles, as well as the Tandy
1000 series, 3000, and 4000. It supports VGA/MCGA (16 colors), EGA, CGA, and
Tandy 16-color graphics. Both 5-1/4" and 3-1/2" disks are included in the game
box. However, the game must be installed on a hard drive to play. ALTERED
DESTINY requires a lot of RAM: The only way I could get mine to run under DOS
3.3 was to boot from a "clean" floppy that didn't load my mouse driver. Someone
at Accolade told me that the program requires 577K of free RAM, although the
instructions say "about 560K." The game offers mouse support (if you can find
enough memory for it). It also supports AdLib, CMS (Soundblaster), and Tandy
sounds, and provides a MIDI driver for other sound cards that are compatible.
Copy protection is by means of an off-disk, three-layer codewheel that's
painless to use.

 I had to phone Accolade about the fatal bug, as well as various questions
regarding the amount of free memory required. I want to mention here that the
folks at Accolade were most friendly and helpful. They spent a good deal of time
on the phone with me, and answered all my questions clearly and candidly.

 I really have mixed feelings about ALTERED DESTINY. On the one hand, the
puzzles are very difficult, but mostly fair: There's enough challenge here for
the more experienced adventurers. I do applaud the use of visual clues in a
graphic adventure; it's quite appropriate. The graphics, the music, and the feel
of the game are good, though not outstanding. The alien world is well conceived,
and enjoyable to explore. On the other hand, you die a lot of unnecessary deaths
in this game, and most of them occur the same way: falling from high places. The
jerky arrow control certainly adds to the frustration. The program's responses
are often misleading, making an otherwise obvious puzzle impossible to solve.
The software has several bugs, one of them fatal if triggered. Overall, I rate
this game higher than SEARCH FOR THE KING, because of its better puzzles and
stronger story line. Accolade is heading in the right direction, but it still
has a bit of polishing to do to before it becomes a contender in the arena of
graphic adventure publishing.

 ALTERED DESTINY is published and distributed by Accolade.

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253