Sinclair User


Corruption

Publisher: Rainbird
Machine: Spectrum 128K/+2

 
Published in Sinclair User #79

Corruption

Following hot on the heels of Jinxter comes Corruption, a very different sort of adventure to the normal offerings from Magnetic Scrolls.

The packaging, as we have come to expect from Rainbird, is excellent, consisting of a casino chip and a cassette containing dialogue and music which needs to be played at a certain stage of the game. You also get a diary/address book and a gameplay manual which contains the ultimate Gambler's Guide and Business Entertainment Guide, together with the usual Cypheric Help section.

Corruption features all the usual game commands with full sentences input and many abbreviations for the most commonly used words.

Corruption

The adventure is set in the modern day world of high finance, your partner has framed you and you must prove your innocence.

So, how do you go about playing the game? You must 'interact' with all the characters that you meet during your exploration of the game world. Don't forget to listen to other people's conversations for example!

The game is played in real time and a quick glance in your diary at the beginning of the game will show you that you are meeting your wife for lunch, so make sure you turn up on time. But you have plenty to do before then, and lots of questions to ask.

Your secretary is the most unobliging person you could ever hope to meet, and you begin to wonder if she is there to help or to hinder. Your partner, David, seems like a really nice guy, so why do The Serious Fraud Office want to interview him? And why does your wife send him perfumed letters which he gets his secretary to bung in the shredding machine? The only way to find out is to ask a lot of questions and go snooping.

The only thing that annoyed me in this game was the fact that other people would go to the toilet and presumably manage to perform their bodily functions before flushing, but I was not allowed to do so! Maybe I couldn't find the correct input, but there can't be that many alternatives to the words I know! Even after I ended up in the hospital, through my own carelessness whilst crossing the road, the nurse wouldn't oblige with a bed pan. [Are you sure this isn't just a personal problem? - Ed]

Apart from that one little niggle though, this game is good. The text is well written, the characters are very realistic and the storyline is believable.

Corruption is different from normal adventures as it depends more on the gathering and correlating of information than puzzle-solving. In time, though you'll be able to find out the answers to all the questions except one. Why can't I use the loo?

Verdict

Super interaction with characters. Absorbing and realistic game world!