Commodore User


Ulysses And The Golden Fleece
By U. S. Gold
Commodore 64

 
Published in Commodore User #29

Ulysses And The Golden Fleece

Greek mythology has already served as the inspiration for more than a few text and graphic adventures, but it is such as rich vein of marvellous stories and fabulous characters, little wonder that it's one that continues to be reworked.

Ulysses And The Golden Fleece from Sierra On-Line, is now available in the UK on US Gold's All American Adventures label.

You are Ulysses reborn and summoned by the Gods to quest again for the wonder of woolies. You must first explore the town in which you find yourself at the start of the adventure, recruiting a crew and assembling provisions for your perilous voyage to the Island of Storms - there to find magical, mystical objects that should be of help to you.

Ulysses And The Golden Fleece

After setting sail again, you may eventually navigate your ship successfully to Colossal Island - where sirens, cyclops and lethally-animated skeletons pose you many more teasing challenges than a vestal virgin on a Club 18-30 fortnight in Benidorm.

Confining the player as they do mainly to verb-noun inputs, authors Bob Davis and Ken Williams are hardly in the running for this year's Platinum Parser award but the more I learn about reader's preferences, the more I wonder whether an adventure's ability to accept endlessly concatenated commands is something that impresses other programmers rather more than the paying public. For even when multi-cause inputs are accepted, it seems that many games tend, as I do, to pussy-foot through the adventure game one command at a time, rather than have to figure out which of the three or more actions I've keyed is illegal.

At least the verbs in Ulysses extend beyond the usual GO, LOOK, GET variety to embrace - as befits a man of the gods - such useful get-outs as jump, fly and swim. You can of course stow and restore a game in progress - but beware that the SAVE routine used in this instance totally reforms the disk you use, thus wiping anything it may already contain!

Graphics on Ulysses are bright and brassy - not too much detail but at least they're colourful and jumbo size, and you can toggle between graphics and the last screenful of text - or jump plump for text alone. All this and the chance to be the most cultured adventurer on the street.

Mike Pattenden

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