Amstrad Computer User
1st January 1987
Publisher: Infogrames
Machine: Amstrad CPC464
Published in Amstrad Computer User #26
Inheritance (Panic in Las Vegas)
Infogrames latest in the adventure field is Inheritance (Panic in Las Vegas). Perhaps I should say one of the latest - it's such a prolific software house that by the time you read this there may well be another being advertised.
You play Peter Stone, a drop out character living in a pretty murky room on the 17th floor of a block of similar seedy apartments. One day he gets a telegram telling him a rich aunt has died and that he will inherit her fortune.
There is of course a small snag. To qualify for this untold wealth, his aunt has stipulated in her will that Peter must travel to Las Vegas and repeat her achievement of the thirties by winning a million dollars - overnight!
The program is on disc and cassette and is in three parts, each of which must be concluded before the next may be attempted. You are given an eight letter code on the successful completion of the first and second parts to allow you to continue.
The game may be played either from the keyboard or with a joystick. There is no need to type in any words, as every action is decided by the position of a cursor moved over the pictorial display. You see what Peter sees.
The first part is in the building and the second at the airport. To move around you direct the cursor to either the left or right side of the display and Peter will turn through 90 degrees. To move forwards simply position the cursor in the middle of the screen/and press the fire button (or spacebar). In the third part, Las Vegas, you are given a map and move the cursor to where you wish to visit. There is no movement within a location.
The graphics are good cartoon pictures and appear very rapidly. Positioning the cursor over certain parts of the picture and pressing the fire button will cause various actions. Some items may be picked up and some characters may have a message for you.
You (Peter) have been sent a plane ticket and £200 to start you on the road to fame and fortune. Your first aim is to leave the apartment block on route for the airport. This is not as easy as it sounds, for unknown to Peter someone has steamed open the telegram about his good fortune and spread the word to all the other people in the block.
Peter has been out of any regular work for some time and has borrowed all sorts of items from his fellow tenants. Before you can leave, these must be returned to their owners. And as Peter cannot remember who they belong to, you have to find out who should get what.
The room contains cupboards and drawers packed with all manner of treasure (junk?). There is also a bag that can hold eight items - you can get hold of this by placing the cursor over it and pressing fire. Do the same to the objects found and they will go in the bag.
As you leave the room and go down the stairs (or lift), your neighbours will appear and demand their belongings - and unless you can return the right items to the right people you cannot leave the building. There is another small snag you have only seventeen minutes to leave the building to get to the airport on time.
Much like any other adventure this poses a problem of, in this case, simple substitution. It is unlikely that you will carry all the right objects at the first attempt and just to confuse the issue the people appear at random on any of the seventeen floors.
Once you have worked that out and attempted to leave the building, you will find that you still need one or two of Peter's things. These are fairly obvious when you think about it does mean a return trip to his room at some time just a matter of planning in advance.
At the airport you have only a few minutes to board the plane. This should be simple, but you drop something vital and have to find it. There are not many locations here but nearly all of them hold something or someone of interest. Anything seen or heard could be important.
Once you land at Las Vegas you must catch the right bus into town. This can be little frustrating as it is difficult to see any logic to the bus services. It becomes even more frustrating when you realize that there is no save game facility and you will have to repeat xxx moves to try again.
Once in Las Vegas the game degenerates into more of a lottery than a logical progression. Your task is to turn a hundred dollars into a million. There are several ways in which to do this but the two principal ones involve pure luck at playing dice or a variation of roulette.
There are fruit machines that steadily make you money but at too slow a rate to to be worthwhile, other than to initially increase your stake. You can steal things and sell them to a fence but again only for peanuts. Russian Roulette can get you $30,000 a time but is only worth trying at the very beginning as sooner or later a bullet is in the wrong chamber!
The game just creeps into the adventure field and with the technique of movement and general object handling is worth seeing. It is a shame that games involving more skill or judgement are not used in the final stages as this would have been more in keeping with the need for a logical mind in the first two parts.