textfiles/games/REVIEWS/twiran.rev

 TWILIGHT'S RANSOM

 If you're in the mood for a text adventure in which the map's the thing and a
rose by any other name will _not_ be recognized (let alone smell as sweet), then
TWILIGHT'S RANSOM may appeal to you. The game comes from Paragon Software (an
affiliated label of Electronic Arts), a company attempting to demonstrate its
versatility by releasing programs in a variety of genres. During the past few
months, they've released WIZARD WARS, a dungeons-and-dragons computer
role-playing game; ALIEN MINDS, a science-fiction CRPG/mystery; and now,

TWILIGHT'S RANSOM, a text mystery with a contemporary setting. (This review is
based on the IBM-PC version; Atari ST and Macintosh version notes follow.)

 In TWILIGHT, you play the part of Ronald J. Mulligan, a 30-year-old graphic
artist and boyfriend to Maria Chavez. Maria works for restauranteur Raoul
Melendez, who has a little business on the side: He's the drug kingpin of El
Salvador. You both work in fictitious Liberty City -- you as a commercial artist
for an ad agency, and Maria as a waitress.

 Tonight's your night out with Maria. You arrive at her apartment, but she's not
there. Her apartment door hangs open, the place has been ransacked, and you
haven't a clue as to who abducted Maria...or why. After all, what's to be gained
from kidnapping a poor waitress -- unless Maria hasn't been honest with you? As
you search her apartment for anything that might make the picture clearer, the
phone rings. It's the kidnappers. They warn you that unless you deliver "the
documents" within 12 hours, Maria will be collecting her tips for the last time.
Obviously, since Maria lives alone, the captors know who you are...and they're
watching you. Best not to get the police involved. You tak it upon yourself to
rescue Maria, even though you have no idea what these documents are, or where
they can be found.

 Unfortunately, Liberty City is a hostile, unpleasant town -- especially at
night, when most of the stores are closed and the streets are not as brightly
lit (a tip of the hat to "Tales from the Dark Side"). The alleys are rife with
underworld lowlifes, and you're being tailed: The toughs don't like your looks.
Since you're not the most physically-oriented person, you generally can't fight
your way out of situations; you've got to use your head and whatever items you
may have found along the way.

 The most complex element of TWILIGHT is the mapping. The map is _huge_ and
sprawling. There are (as the manual warns) more locations than in the average
text adventure (I stopped counting at 100); however, the vast majority of these
locations doesn't figure into the plot at all. This quickly becomes obvious, and
it's a bit disturbing, because the map is a _lot_ of work -- most of it for
nothing. It's an interesting (read: frustrating) map to try to construct because
it takes some unusual twists.

 What makes the game exceptionally tough for cartographers is the fact that the
input vanishes from the screen as soon as the parser interprets it. Thus, if
you're at the intersection of Bond Street and Tempest Avenue, and you type an
"E" (for east), you then move to a location called "Bond St." and the "E"
disappears. So, if by chance, in the course of making copious notes (which is of
paramount importance in this game), you've forgotten whether you've gone east or
west, there's no point in looking for that information on the screen. I'm not a
forgetful type, but the mapping is _so_ complex that I often had to retrace my
steps just to confirm my notes. Another peculiarity is that, with each move, you
sometimes travel whole blocks and sometimes half-blocks.

 Provided you've mapped all of Liberty City and explored each location
carefully, the puzzles can then be tackled systematically. Some aren't exactly
logical or fair, but are simply matters of sufficient exploration. One of the
vagaries of the game's programming makes exploration less complicated: Usually,
any object which can be manipulated is mentioned in its own sentence at the end
of a given location's description. So, if you're faced with two paragraphs of
prose describing the front porch of a house, followed by a single offset
sentence that reads "There is a yucca plant in a large flower pot here," you
have a pretty good idea that something can be done with that plant (or the pot).

 Where the game slows down is in recognizing words. Yes, it's time once again to
play "find that noun." I thought this sort of problem had received enough bad
press that game designers would be more conscientious; then again, Paragon is
new at the text adventure game. It's unnerving to type "look at apartment" when
you're in Maria's apartment and get the response "You can't see any apartment
here." The vocabulary in this game is just plain crude. The game manual includes
a short list of verbs, which makes verb usage a bit easier, but the noun
recognition is poor. The parser, though, is far more capable than the vocabulary
would suggest. It recognizes "it" as referring to the object of the previous
command -- a pleasant surprise; I only wish (at times) that it would recognize
"again" as a repeated command. It also allows the use of brief, normal, and
verbose modes.

 Although TWILIGHT is text-driven, there are graphics available from time to
time during the game. You can see them by giving the Picture command; however,
they don't contain any clues or useful information, so you won't miss anything
important if you don't display them. The pictures run hot and cold; some are
dramatic and effective, others are poorly rendered and simplistic.

 The prose is adequate, but indulges in verbosity. There are long, long masses
of descriptive text; although they sometimes move the plot along, more often,
they're superfluous -- even more so when you consider that the program
comprehends very little of what it's saying.

 Included in the package are a reference card for your specific computer; a game
manual with the plot overview, sample verb list, guide to playing text
adventures, special commands, and tips; a pen stolen from the restaurant where
Maria works (a very cute detail); a small piece of paper with some cryptic
writing; and a piece of Liberty City promotional material describing many of the
locations and details about the city -- all in a humorously naive,
chest-thumping, civic-pride style.

 The TWILIGHT'S RANSOM package contains both 3-1/2" and 5-1/4" versions (a
single 3-1/2" disk and two 5-1/4" disks). The disks are copy protected, and
although they may be copied, you'll need to insert the original disk to start
the game.

 An interesting alternative to hard disk installation is a RAM-access option:
Using a command line parameter, you can load the entire game (except for
pictures) into memory upon booting. This saves quite a bit of time during lo
game sessions when the program reads a lot from disk. You'll need 512K to take
advantage of this option, and you'll still need to have the pictures available,
either on a floppy disk or on your hard drive (the picture files are not copy
protected). A utility or command line parameter to cancel the pictures
altogether would have been nice: If you don't view the pictures, you'll keep
getting reminders to look at them until you do. You can also toggle on
AUTOPICTURE, which automatically displays pictures in their appropriate
locations.

 The game will run in monochrome, CGA, and EGA modes, but it does not support
EGA graphics (displaying 4-color CGA graphics instead), and it will not provide
graphics at all in monochrome mode.

 The screen display is unusual, using several colors and constantly displaying
the "title" of your location and the number of moves you've made. You're given a
single line buffer in which to type your commands; the rest of the screen
displays the game's responses to your commands.

 Another unusual feature is the support of the AICOM speech synthesis board. I
don't have one of these, nor do I know of any other game which supports it, so I
can't say how well the synthesis works. If you do own such a device, you can
toggle the speech option.

 Saving and restoring is very simple and quick (although you cannot save to
either of the game disks; you'll have to provide a formatted disk or use a hard
disk). You save and restore with a similar command, and once you've established
the pathname, you don't have to use it anymore. The game will also print a
running transcript, if you desire.

 This last item is fairly serious: The IBM reference card and game manual omi
some _very_ important details, such as how to communicate with other characters,
enter numbers, and execute other crucial commands. This information is available
in a README file on the picture disk. Print it out and keep it with your manual.

 I have mixed feelings about TWILIGHT. After a while, I became accustomed to the
unpredictable vocabulary and began to anticipate the game's needs. Finishing the
map gave me a real sense of triumph and exhaustion, as did finishing the game.
Thanks to the quick save/restore features, once the game was mapped, it wasn't
difficult to complete. If you can accept the limitations I've outlined,
TWILIGHT'S RANSOM might not be a bad choice for you. With Infocom branching out
into graphics-dependent games, there aren't many new text adventures released.
Although TWILIGHT isn't a gem, it's certainly an encouraging entry from a
promising software developer.

 ATARI ST VERSION NOTES

 Ordinary people caught in extraordinary situations is the stuff of good Cornell
Woolrich books and good Alfred Hitchcock movies. In TWILIGHT'S RANSOM, we're
presented with just such a premise. While the story is fine, its implementation
on the Atari ST suffers from some problems.

 The ST screen display consists of (from top to bottom), a menu bar for File,
Text, and Picture selections; a large text description area; and a command line
that accepts your input and displays the number of moves you've made.

 RANSOM operates in low-res color mode; the text is large and readable. The disk
is accessed after nearly every command, but even worse is the automatic
scrolling that occurs during text display: New lines appear in languid bursts as
each line appears, the text of the entire screen is washed out for a moment by
red highlights. The vertical slider bar for scrolling the text backward would
have been a more useful feature if it hadn't been included.

 There are 175 Liberty City locations to explore; there are pictures of 20 of
these locations. No picture appears until you've reached a particular place;
when you do reach one, the picture loads quickly. At this point, you can either
look at it or press a key to return to the game: You can't do both. T picture on
the title screen is gritty and atmospheric, and it disappears in a nifty
dissolve when you press a key to start the game.

 RANSOM supports a second disk drive. Games can be saved and reloaded under a
default filename or a filename of your choosing. A blank, formatted disk is
optional but recommended. Text displays can be Brief, Normal, or Verbose. The
display of the pictures can be toggled by way of Autopic; View will display the
current picture.

 The command parser works well, and offers editing features: Function keys rerun
and re-display the previous command line for editing; the arrow keys move the
cursor around the current command line.

 This adult story wasn't written by James Ellroy, but it's adequate, especially
once you've entered the flow of it.

 Since I'm a sucker for an all-text mystery (the pictures of RANSOM, though
well-done, are truly optional), I was able to overcome the constant disk access,
the horrible scrolling, and the blinking red highlights. Paragon's command
processor -- though not up to the level of Infocom's or Magnetic Scrolls' --
gets the job done with, at worst, little trouble; it definitely makes the
aforementioned problems much less annoying.

 If you can get past this stuff, you'll find a good Atari ST mystery thriller in
TWILIGHT'S RANSOM.

 MACINTOSH VERSION NOTES

 TWILIGHT'S RANSOM for the Macintosh does just about everything you'd expect
from a port, but adds little else. In the above review, the game appears to be a
text-only game, so when I read the packaging blurb and saw "graphic-text"
adventure label, I thought, "Great! They've added graphics to the Mac version!"
I started up the game and saw what appeared to be a digitized rendering of a man
with a gun, a lovely woman by his arm, and the game's title. "Wow," I thought,
"terrific graphics!" However, as I entered the play mode, I got a plain, old
text screen. Still hopeful, I searched for a "graphics enable" option under one
of the menus. No such luck! In fact, there are graphics depicting various
scenes, but they number about 25 for the entire game. Most of the time, you
wander around in an all-text mode. Now, as Infocom has shown, this is not all
bad; unfortunately, as noted above, TWILIGHT'S RANSOM's parser has a limited
vocabulary, and commands must be fairly simple.

 The graphics the game _does_ offer are well done; my only regret is that
Paragon didn't see fit to incorporate more of these illustrations into the
Macintosh version.

 TWILIGHT'S RANSOM requires a Macintosh 512KE, System 3.2 or higher, and one
800K drive.

 TWILIGHT'S RANSOM is published by Paragon Software Corporation and distributed
by Electronic Arts.

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