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The
game arrived at my abode along with what turned out
to be a very useful hint sheet. The screen display is
very well laid out, with the now standard picture window,
message section and input window in respective order
down the screen. The graphics are good too, seeming
to have more texture and life to them than recent Level
9 mixed-mode adventures of late. Input is handled quickly
and vocabulary isn't bad, but after having played Starcross
earlier on, it still seemed relatively simplistic. For
instance, right after the beginning of the game, you
are stuck in a dungeon. After gaining information about
the only possible exit point, the necessary course of
action was fairly obvious even before checking the hint
sheet (which was needed eventually). Yet, because of
the input restrictions, it was quite a few turns before
the computer understood what was wanted of it. The final
command really was so ambiguous, it was most annoying.
One
good new feature was that individual commands could
be strung together using a comma or a full stop. The
word search routines must have been modified as well
because you can now input full sentences and as long
as they only contain a single command, they are acceptable.
Still,
you can't have everything on a cassette-based game and
sooner or later you get an impression of what kind of
commands the computer will respond to. As you are trapped
in a dungeon in Sir Guy of Gisbourne's castle when the
game starts, it does become somewhat important that
you can express your desire to leave forthwith.
The
adventure is not really for beginners, with some terribly
sticky situations to get out of (no, that isn't a clue).
On the whole, Robin of Sherwood is around medium
complexity by AI standards. The object of the
adventure is to find the Touchstones of Rhiannon, hence
the game's subtitle. This involves several long-winded
searches to find your allies and equipment, and the
timely rescue of Marion (oh yes, there's a love story
too). The whole affair is reasonably paced. There aren't
too many puzzles in your path but they are accordingly
difficult. Game time only exists during input, as is
the norm with this type of adventure. Other than the
minor alteration to the input routines mentioned earlier
however, there is nothing particularly new about the
game.
All
in all this isn't a bad adventure, but even though it
features one of television's most popular heroes at
the moment and it is quite competently written, there
are plenty of superior games out on the market, with
more originality too. You could do a lot worse than
add this to your collection, and if you are a fan of
Robin Hood you will probably find it worthwhile, as
one of the game's strong points is its atmosphere. Having
said all that, if you didn't rush out and buy it, you
would not have missed out on much . . .
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