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However, the good news is that Lucifer's Realm
is actually quite novel, though you shouldn't expect
anything on the stunning side except for some of the
graphics. The plot is hilarious: you find yourself in
hospital and all of a sudden the Doc says to the Nurse
'He's going to die very soon.' Sure enough, next moment
you're knocking on the Pearly Gates and having judgement
passed upon you . . .
I
don't have to tell you (do I?) that all those vile deeds
you swept under the carpet are immediately tipped into
the balance, and you find yourself with a one way ticket
to Down Under -- a fiery pit that makes an Australian
bar just before closing seem like a deserted Caribbean
beach. All you can hear are the screams of lost souls
-- presumably crying out for water and Band-Aid -- and
all you can see are flames, flames, and more flames!
Try getting out of THAT with only two-word input!
The
program kicks off with some rather novel digitised pictures
of the programmers, giving the whole affair something
of a movie atmosphere. Once you find yourself in Hell,
you have to stay on the hop in a bid to escape from
the first location, but after that moving around gets
fairly easy. Once you've cracked the first two puzzles,
the full absurdity of the ploy hits you: Adolf Hitler
has got together an army and is trying to overthrow
sweet, soft-centred ol' Satan.
Lucifer
then offers anyone who can present him with conclusive
proof of Mr Hitler's intentions, a safe passage back
upstairs to Paradise, and since no-one else seems interested,
it's up to you to get your elbows dirty and your eyebrows
singed.
The
display is rather unusual and slightly limiting -- the
graphics occupy most of the screen except for a small
text window at the bottom of the display that shows
the computer's last response. Hitting any key clears
the graphics and shows you a text-screen with details
of your inventory, what you can see, and an input line.
You enter your (short) command, hit RETURN, and the
graphics flip back on with the response below.
[This
screenshot was not in the original review]
Sadly
the humour of the plot and the excellence of some of
the graphics do not deter from the rather basic nature
of the program. The vocabulary is extremely limited
and the inputs allowed are similarly restricted. Verb/noun
is as far as you can go -- and sometimes you don't even
get that far! The responses are also short and barely
to the point -- "Try something else', says the computer
in response to just about everything it either doesn't
understand or doesn't consider appropriate. Not very
helpful.
The
location descriptions are also extremely short, one-sentence
affairs, but then I guess you're meant to be looking
at the graphics, not reading the text.
Despite
these shortcomings, however, the Wiz had quite a few
laughs over this program. If you're not being vapourised
by Adolph Eichmann, you're nattering away to John Wilkes
Booth (who assassinated Lincoln), or flushing yourself
down Stygian drains. This game isn't anywhere near Infocom
standard (or Activision, or even Level 9), but it stays
on my shelf until I've got that Nazi swine up to the
shoulders in lava.
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