Previous Next

Zapping aliens or outwitting cybernetic logic, your finger's on the button with Gameplay

You dimly remember winning the planet Contra's semi-millennial lottery. You recall that the prize was the honour of serving as Contra's Central Mentality, your duty being to ensure the survival of life on the planet. You bring to mind that day they froze your body deep within the underground complex and connected your brain to the computer network, the day your life was suspended for 500 years.

This is the imaginative setting for Infocom's latest adventure, Suspended - aptly subtitled "A Cryogenic Nightmare". You have been roused from suspension to cope with a critical imbalance in Contra's three filtering computers, the controllers of the planet's life-support systems. However, in your semi-suspended state, the only way you can resolve the emergency is by issuing commands, via the filtering computers, to six idiosyncratic robots.

Each of these named robots has a unique set of characteristics. Auda is your ears, Iris your eyes and Sensa a mixture of sensory apparatus. Waldo is for manipulating objects, Whiz is an interfacing device, allowing you access to the Core's indices, technical and historical information, and expert advice. Poet (you'll love this android) is a zany, purple-prosed diagnostic computer. He sees and describes the world around him in speech that is unlike anyone else's, robot or human.

As in all Infocom adventures, commands can be given in a variety of formats. You can talk to one or more robots at the same time.

You are given little idea of what caused the emergency, only that some connecting cabling between the Filtering Computers has been damaged and that you must repair it quickly. As the Filtering Computers control the weather, food production and transportation systems, you don't need a computer to guess the effect a malfunction would have on Contra's lifestyle.

Your performance is therefore chiefly measured in terms of how many of the population have perished before your bumbling attempts to correct the fault are successful. Other factors affecting your score include the number of computer cycles (turns) and the conditions prevailing on the planet surface.

The game comes complete with a glossy coloured fold-out board showing all 58 locations in the complex, so there's no need to make a map. Six individually scribed rubber markers are supplied for your use in tracking the robots' whereabouts. Background, commands, information, and examples are supplied in a large-format booklet. Together with the disk, the whole package comes in an eye-catching box whose front depicts in relief a frozen face.

First you should try to get the hang of each individual robot's character, perception and attributes. Move them around the complex to see how they react and how they can best be used. You can move a robot long distances by simply telling it to head for a particular place - it will report back when it gets there.

Become familiar with the complex and what each of the 58 areas holds. Have a peep at the weather monitors, the decontamination chamber and the cryogenic area. Try interrogating the Central Library Core via Whiz and the pedestals. Learn how to repair the robots when they malfunction. Pay particular attention to the various interrupts that your robots and the Filtering Computers will make.

Don't worry about your score on the first few attempts - you'll have more than enough to cope with!

Apart from the utter strangeness of trying to feel your way around an alien environment through the medium of six other personalities, there is another factor to think about. It seems your predecessor woke up prematurely one morning, found no emergency, so set about creating his own. One of his jollier japes was to cause the Taxi-Robots in the transportation system to seek out and run down hapless pedestrians. An extermination squad took care of him, but some of his handiwork still lies within the complex, not the least of which is a mangled, heavy-duty robot which had been "attended to" by your potty precursor.

When you do eventually succeed in completing a game, you can always try to better your score. There are also three greater challenges for you to attempt: Advanced, Configure and Impossible.

Advanced is a much more time-intensive version of the same game, while Configure allows you to select your own starting positions and factors. You can place the robots in any location (or even have them out of action), set the cooling and surface systems timing, etc. This way you can set up all sorts of problems for you (or friends) to overcome.

Impossible is impossible - anyone completing this version gets an all-expenses paid trip to Contra!

This is a highly original, hugely enjoyable adventure. It's a bit more difficult than the usual breed, but has all the qualities that go to make good adventures so darned addictive. It has humour, imagination, challenge, and it's different. A winner all the way. It's enough to make the competition want to go into suspended animation for 500 years!