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The heartbeat quickens and your breathing suddenly seems
febrile and irregular. You're alone in the house and
the only illumination is the eerie blue-green glow from
your monitor and the sanguineous emanation from the
power indicator of your 64. Was that a floorboard squeaking
just then, or was it something far more sinister? Dare
you look around to check? If you do, you risk having
to reload your game from scratch . . .
There
are several examples on the market of computer games
based on famous books. The Electronic Pencil Company's
The Fourth Protocol is perhaps one of the best
examples of current successes in this field. Hodder
and Stoughton's The Rats, based on James Herbert's
chilling novel, is the latest offering in this area.
It is an unusual mixture of semi-graphics adventuring
and real time strategy.
The
title sequence is one of the most original and atmospheric,
ever designed for a computer game. A prologue is written
out in bold white letters across a black screen to set
the scene. What follows is a sound and animation sequence
in which a pool of torchlight is seen wandering around
in the blackness, before red eyes appear in the dark.
A heartbeat effect in the background becomes faster.
Suddenly, a superbly drawn rat pounces into view! Only
then are you presented with the main, blood-spattered
loading screen, with eerie accompanying theme music.
The
Rats is, to all intents and purposes, two games
in one. The Strategy game involves stopping the spread
of the rodent plague from the city of London and killing
it off. The opening screen is a simplified map of the
city with an option window at the bottom. The main choices
presented are 'Report', 'Forces', and 'Research'. A
cursor flashes on various parts of the map to indicate
rat activity. You may then ask for information on the
relevant area, deploy forces there, or ignore the cursor
and work on research instead. If you ask for a report,
you are prompted to define from where you wish to access
information by locating your own cursor on the map and
pressing Return (or hitting the fire button). On doing
this, a smaller window opens up on the screen and presents
some basic information such as 'Man in street sees monster
rats'. You may then eliminate the window and move on.
[This
screenshot was not in the original review.]
Reports
from various groups you may have deployed in the field
can also be obtained by using the same process, including
three icons on the screen indicating the R&D centre,
GHQ and Harris' flat (Harris is one of the major characters
from the adventure section). It is fairly important
to follow the reports so that you become aware of the
nature of the attacks, but to concentrate too much time
on them would leave you no time to allocate forces.
The deployment of the fire service, police and professional
rat-killers is essential to your success, because if
the rats leave London then the game is lost. The three
types of forces have varying abilities and weapons.
To start with, weapons are fairly conventional -- dogs,
gas and high pressure water hoses. You must equip each
unit (fortunately you need not try to figure out how
many of what to give to whom; the limitations of each
force are worked out for you), and then designate the
area requiring their attention. Later you may ask for
that unit's progress report.
Your
forces are very limited, and trying to stop the rats
with them is pretty well, impossible. What you need
to do is delay them for as long as you can, and eventually
the army is brought in (by a reluctant government) to
give you a second lease of life. This does not happen
for some time however, and there's plenty to keep you
busy beforehand.
[This
screenshot was not in the original review.]
Spending
time on research is another important process. You have
only so many resources and you must decide how to best
use them. The areas for research are 'origin', 'nature',
'offence' and 'defence'. Spending points on offence
and defence will help develop more advanced weaponry
with which to combat the menace. However, finding out
about their source is fundamentally important to the
adventure game.
The
Adventure section, like the strategic one, is in real
time. You are shifted to the adventure section at random
intervals throughout play. Each entry into this section
is precluded by an alarm sound from the computer. This
part of the game is more like a series of mini-adventures,
involving various minor characters' encounters with
the rats. It does not matter if you lose some of the
minor characters (easily enough done at the beginning),
but if a major character (such as Harris) bites the
dust, then you've had it!
The
adventure display contains a major window on the right
of the screen, showing all the text in slow-scrolling
format, which helps emphasise the real time aspect of
the game. At the bottom of the screen is a small window
with three main command options and when accessed, further
sub-options are presented in the left-hand window. A
heartbeat sound accompanies the action and as the situation
becomes more tense, the heartbeat speeds up. Because
the game uses options instead of clear text input, conversations
with the computer never become ambiguous, so play is
resultingly very fast and efficient. However, on occasions
an option appears that was not there before, implying
its impending use. Sometimes this does not help but
more often than not it may be treated as an integral
hint sheet! If you lose the encounter with the rats,
the page seems to tear open to reveal a nasty-looking
rat, and there is the sound of a scream . . . AAARRRGH!
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