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Portal of the Worlds
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| First Impression |
QB has always had gazillions of text adventures programmed in it. That's never going to change. Text adventures will be around until people stop using DOS-based languages, and probably longer. David Eriksson brings us another text adventure, but this time it has graphics! |
| What It's Like |
This is a dumbed down text adventure engine. You select from a list of options by typing it's number and pressing enter. Each place you can go has a landscape in the background made almost 100% of LINE statements. (Boy, that must have taken a lot of work to do!) Anyways, you go through an EXTREMELY linear text rpg, where you can either investigate stuff in the screen, go back to the last area, or go forward. There is pretty much no thinking involved. There are also some bugs once you get into the portal of the worlds, which make the game a bit frusterating.
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| Other things you should know |
These graphics aren't good, but I do know how hard it is to make graphics with text.
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| The rating |
| Graphics |
I'm feeling generous. As you can see in the screenshots, they are bad. If you've been programming in QB for a long time, you can also tell that they were made completely with text statements. (A real pain in the arse.) Out of empathy for people who haven't discovered sequential graphics files yet, I'm boosting the score a bit. Plus, the program does end with a pretty cool 'melting' effect.
*** |
| Sound |
A little ditty plays at the title screen that you can't skip. It's also not very good. The music is played on the internal speaker, and as I said before, is not good. 'nuff said.
** |
| Gameplay/Control |
Press a number, press enter. Not revolutionary, and not the best, but it works.
*** 1/2 |
| Plot/Story |
Sorry, but this has got to have one of the worst stories I've ever heard. The descriptions of the areas are lame, there's little that you can do, and it's soooo linear. The idea of a portal to other worlds has been used a bit too much, and the whole experience of playing this game was a bore. Since I was being generous on the graphics and control/gameplay scores, I'll be ungenerous here.
* |
| Overall Impression |
It's the work of a newbie. I like the idea of the graphics, and if the actual gameplay was as good as the concept was, it may have gotten a better score. Maybe a sequel or an improvement with better graphics and an engine would make the game good, but for now, this needs a large amount of work.
** 1/2 |
| Total |
12/25 * 4 =
48% |
