Games Computing
1st February 1984Quest Adventure (Hewson Consultants)
You can't do justice to a game as complex as this in three hundred words. Yes, it is a traditional adventure, but it is not just problem solving, and neither is it purely wandering through mazes, or just fighting monsters nor just wielding mighty spells. On first sight it appears one of those infinite games of 'fight and wander' which starts by choosing a character type (in this case wizard, cleric, rogue, fighter or simpleton) and ends with a message like "you die of lack of constitution" (whatever that means) when you've bitten off more than you can chew.
Well, it is one of those games. However it is almost as complex as some (Fantasy Role Playing) games in its combat system, using a concept called 'combat adds' from these games to calculate quite complex fights. However it does not give the player much control over tactics or weapon so is still more limited than its tabletop ancestors.
But hack and slay is by no means the end of the story. In addition to having to defeat sundry malignant beings you must also solve a series of puzzles as in the other type of adventure which is so popular. Here you must find objects, carry them to the appropriate places and discover their uses. You might think a game which tries hard to be interesting and varied for FRP gamers will be pretty unoriginal in its puzzling.
Wrong again! The puzzles are difficult, the mazes complex and the Hobbit-like graphics are very pleasant. True there are not many illustrations and they sometimes do not match the text (the ornate bridge has no decoration at all, for example) but even 48K runs out.
Needless to say, I have not yet solved it (has any reviewer ever solved an adventure before he writes the review?) but I am greatly enjoying the attempt. A very satisfactory game. What we need now is an adventure which combines artificial intelligence and 3D moving graphics with this kind of complexity. That would be a game and a half! Anyone out there writing one?