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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: [IFLibComp] Short Reviews with Some Spoilers
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Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 09:15:19 GMT
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I was thinking about writing a brief review of Passing
Familiarity, especially considering the brevity that
"Triune" and "Desert Heat" received in my reviews and
playthroughs (and, shame on me, I didn't review LoTech
and hence "One Week"), but a lot of the things I wanted
to say have been covered, so I'll just reply to this
one post.

Possibly there are spoilers here but probably not really
but just in case...













Papillon  <papillon_hentai@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>>Another teeth-grinding introduction. I can't help it; an introduction which
>>sets up an amnesia situation for whatever reason just isn't a good start.
>
>*grin* Bluntly, I was tired of trying too hard to come up with things that
>hadn't been done before and figured 'What the heck, let's go for the
>bleeding obvious and work from there'.

I thought it was a nice start--self-induced amnesia. That almost
sounds like a cliche too--something so horrible the character forces
himself to forget it--but I can't actually place it in any specifics.
It does remind me slightly of the frequently-mentioned CRPG
Planescape: Torment.

>>I don't understand why I'd want to remember
>>something so awful it made me drink a potion to forget it in the first
>>place, though, except as an exercise in finding out what happened *for the
>>player*. Maybe I'll see when I do see that ending.
>
>...if the player is willing to accept an
>ending in which the character escapes from the setting, still with amnesia,
>and never remembers whatever it was she forgot - then so is she. It's not
>necessarily a bad ending. It's quite possibly a better ending. You have the
>option of leaving it there.
>
>But if you're curious and if you've uncovered enough hints about the past to
>wonder what really happened, then, well, the character wonders as well.

I thought this was delicious once I realized what was going on.
When it came up that Vicious Cycles had a rather Luddite message,
someone defended it because you could stop early and avoid that
conclusion, but stopping early just wasn't that reasonable in
that game, I think.

This one, I think, pulls it off. The character must know that it
was something awful, that she doesn't want to know, and yet she
is tempted; the player doesn't feel the exact same thing, so it
doesn't quite bring the PC and the player to the same mental
state, but it takes an interesting step towards it--far beyond
the typical amnesia game.

>I know there's always been some disagreement about read/examine objects and
>ease-of-use, but in my mind there really is a distinction.
[snip]

That's probably a reasonable call. They did still feel like
they were strung out too conventiently--probably a product
of how small the map is versus how much text you wanted to
get across.

>*rueful grin* No offense to you, of course, but it's awfully annoying to
>hear the words "a bit of effort" after you've tried hard to give something a
>decently rigorous beta. :)

One Spag review of "The Weapon" complained about one puzzle being
guess-the-verby and failing to acknowledge guesses on the right
track; this after The Weapon went through a six-month combined
beta-and-gamma test period (not to mention the revisions during
alpha). My sympathies.

My experience with PF was, unfortunately, not quite as good as
the above comments might lead you to think; I forgot to look
in the bathroom cabinet and then forgot it was there waiting
to be opened, and I somehow spaced the idea of typing "OPEN
CURTAINS" (but I tried 'LOOK BEHIND CURTAINS' and 'MOVE CURTAINS'
and 'EXAMINE NORTH WALL', all to no success), at which point
I looked at the walkthrough, at which point it seemed like
a fairly mechanical, systematic solution--cast the spells in
every room, use x on y, etc.--so I just went for the shortest
solution and quit playing. But this is because I am a lousy
player (missing the aforementioned things), impatient and
cantankerous, and I have a rule about never playing a game
by reading from a walkthrough (because then I'm reading, not
playing).

Overall I'd judge that the problem lies about half in me and
my unreasonable impatience, and about half in the game for
being a little too repetitive and mechanical. But I think it
was a fairly neat idea, and one of the best uses of an
early ("multiple") ending I've ever seen.

SeanB
