When someone
told me the parser in this British adventure for the Commodore 64, 128 and
Amiga was almost as smart as the Infocom parser, I did not believe it. Though
the scenarios of English adventures are often more imaginative than their
American counterparts, the programming has always been technically inferior,
especially in the parser department. So I was amazed when I played The
Pawn, written by Magnetic Scrolls and distributed here by Firebird.
The program
handily parses circles around every American counterpart except Infocom's
- and it's not far behind that one. How many programs could handle this
sentence: "Get all except the cases but not the violin case then kill
the man-eating shrew with the contents of the violin case."? With a 3,500-word
vocabulary, it understands adjectives, pronouns and two interpretations
of the conjunction and instead of just one as with most parsers. That
means you can say "Remove the shrew's tail and use it to tie the pole
and the noose together."
The parser
outdoes Infocom's in the number of multiple commands it can deal with
in one whack: 32. Actually, the only significant capability the Infocom
parser has that is missing here is the "oops" feature (if you've misspelled
or used an unknown word in a command, such as "get the yellow frob," you
can say "oops frog" instead of retyping the entire command).
But even
the world's smartest parser is just a bunch of bits and bytes unless it's
put to work inside a good game, and The Pawn also delivers well-honed
prose, vivid graphics, innovative visual effects, and dozens of puzzles
- some diabolically difficult, others deceptively simple - in an imaginative
story.
After
being knocked out on the way home from the market, you awake in the magical
land of Kerovnia. On your wrist is a silver band that cannot be removed.
Your goal is to escape Kerovnia, where a general election is about to
be held to decide whether King Erik will continue to reign. A dwarf, whose
campaign pledge is to "rid dungeons of mazes of any sort" is running against
the King. Other locals you'll meet are Kronos the Magician, a Guru on
a hill, a Dragon and an Adventurer.
The games's
title starts to make sense after you've talked to some of these folks
- everyone has a task for you and you're never quite sure what goals they're
really using you to attain. Kronos, for example, wanted me to deliver
a note to King Erik. But the King pitched a fit when he read it, then
the guards threw me out of the castle. Most puzzles are object-oriented,
and there are scores of things to juggle while figuring out where to use
them and how to do so.
If you
get stuck, the program's on-line hint feature doles out graduated hints.
You just type in encrypted clues from the book to see clues about specific
problems. But some clues can't be obtained until your score is high enough.
And typos rendered several of the clues completely useless. (Firebird
also gives hints over the phone.) Top score is 350 points, and only the
sharpest adventurers will get them all without a clue or hint from somewhere.
About
50 of the locations are lushly illustrated, with three text lines visible
below. Like most graphic games, The Pawn lets you turn off the
pictures. It also introduces new options. For example, if you need to
read text currently covered by a picture, you can hit a function key to
scroll the picture up or down a line at a time (which is faster than turning
the entire picture on and off again). The 64 version has cameos which
zoom the picture down to fill a small rectangle in the upper right-hand
corner so you can read the entire screen and still se a picture. Text
passages often extend across screens and the prose is distinguished by
a wry sense of humor.
With
all but the 64 version, the entire two-disk program loads into RAM and
accesses the disk only to load fresh graphics. Even the 64 version doesn't
go to the disk often. The 128 version runs in native 128 mode, has better
graphics, and a choice of 40- or 80-column display. Amiga owners will
get the best pictures, of course.
The program
is not copy-protected. Intermittently it requests you to type in a word
from a certain page and line of an accompanying 55-page book, the same
scheme employed by Broderbund's Electronic Novels. This means you can
make backup copies of the program disks. Technically and creatively, this
is England's all-time best adventure game. For advanced players, The
Pawn is a must whether you prefer text or graphic adventures. And
by the time you finish it, Magnetic Scrolls should have completed their
next title, Guild of Thieves.