TIMEQUEST

 From time to time, folks have posted messages right here in The Gamers' Forum 
lamenting over the demise of Infocom and the kind of text adventures it used 
to publish. If you were one of those who loved the Infocom adventures or a new 
fan who just wanted to see what all the hoopla was about, wait no more! 
TIMEQUEST, published by Legend Entertainment Company, has arrived!

 TIMEQUEST is the second offering from Legend, following the footsteps of the 
wild and wacky Spellcasting 101 by Steve Meretzky. Like Steve, TIMEQUEST's 
author Bob Bates was a card carrying memeber of the Infocom gang, with the 
games Sherlock and Arthur to his credit. This review is based on the MS-DOS 
version. 

 As the title suggests, TIMEQUEST's storyline is about time travel. As the 
game begins, you are a private in Temporal Corps in the year 2090. (How come 
the hero in every game always starts out as a private? For once I'd like to 
start out as a general and work my way _down_!) Temporal Corps is an 
organization formed specifically to investigate time travel. Temporal Corps 
officers have been using time machines called interkrons to travel to the 
future.

 It has just been determined that Lieutenant Zeke Vettenmyer used his 
interkron to travel back into the past and altered ten critical historical 
events over a time span of 3000 years, from 1361 B.C. to 1940 A.D. If any of 
these events were allowed to run their courses, the present as you know it 
will cease to exist. Vettenmyer has sent back his interkron as a challenge to 
anyone to try to track him down.

 Using Vettenmyer's interkron, a person can travel to all the locations that 
Vettenmyer visited and arrive at those locations one second after Vettenmyer's 
departure. Of course the entire world depends on someone who is brave enough 
to use the machine to travel back in time and clever enough to undo the 
damages that Vettenmyer has inflicted on the time continuum. You have already 
guessed who the chosen one was, haven't you? Yes, it's you! Another mission to 
save the entire world, past, present and future. 

 This game is huge! It turns out that Vettenmyer visited 6 geographical 
locations: Rome, Dover, Mexico, Peking, Cairo and Baghdad over 9 different 
time periods. To complete the game, the player must visit a total of 49 
time-place locales, some more than once. At each locale, there are typically 4 
to 5 places that the player can travel to. It will take several hours of your 
playing time just to visit each time zone and examine the various puzzles in 
store for you. Don't expect to complete this game in less than 10 hours. Plan 
on spending 20 to 30 hours instead.

 In order to preserve the time continuum, the player's main objective is to 
undo the changes that Vettenmyer tried to influence in 10 historical events. A 
"mission briefing papers" booklet is included which explains each event as 
well as _what_ the player must accomplish. It does not, however, contain any 
hint as to _how_. Besides the main objective, the player must also discover 19 
messages left behind by Vettenmyer in various times and places. Only then, can 
the endgame of tracking down the villain begin.

 The underlying story has to be the weakest element in the game. Its only 
function is to provide a reasonable backdrop for the puzzles. As the player 
progresses in the game, there is no further development in the plot. Why 
Vettenmyer would want to destroy the world was never satisfactorily explained. 
There was not the slightest effort to justify giving the awesome task of 
saving the world to a private of the corps. And that Vettenmyer sent back his 
interkron because he subconsciously wanted to be caught was a rather 
overworked and less than believable premise.

 I must hasten to point out, however, that the ten historical events that make 
up the ten missions in the game are most interesting and thought provoking. 
Most of these ten events are well recorded anomalies in our history books. It 
is great fun to play the game, solve the puzzles and let the game author 
convince us that these anomalies could be due to the meddlings of a couple of 
time travellers.

 It is apparent that the author was counting on the puzzles and not the story 
to lure the player further and further into the game. And what _wonderful_ 
puzzles these are! While some are rather simple and can be solved without 
items from other time zones, others are complex and devious and require the 
player to do quite a bit of time-hopping.

 Above all, it is clear that the puzzles were all constructed with tender 
loving care. Everyone is fair and logical with abundantly well placed clues. 
Yet the solution is never too obvious. The sense of accomplishment and 
satisfaction the player gets after solving a few puzzles can only be 
duplicated by playing one of the original Infocom adventures. 

 If you were like me, you were probably a little perturbed to see the word 
"historical". Be assured that though quite a few puzzles require talking to 
and otherwise interacting with famous characters in history such as Napoleon, 
Cleopatra and Churchill, no historical knowledge is assumed or needed to 
complete the game.

 The game time is displayed throughout the game and advances only when the 
player makes a move. It is important to keep track of it, however, because 
certain puzzles can only be solved in some particular points in time. I should 
point out that although the game is quite successful in using time as a 
suspense builder, the player always has ample time to investigate and solve 
the puzzles. Knowing what to do but not having enough time to do it is never a 
problem in this game.

 There is no red herring. Every object has at least one use and you must visit 
every one of the 49 locales to complete the game. Two of these locales do seem 
to arbitrarily require that you be at the right place at the right time to be 
successful. Here is a hint: there is something to be accomplished at each of 
the 49 locales. If you don't find anything of interest in a particular locale, 
be especially wary.

 The graphics are mostly still pictures depicting the secenery of the 
surroundings and covering approximately one quarter of the screen. There are 
some animations in parts of the game achieved mainly by color cycling. 
Although all the important objects are depicted in the pictures, all the clues 
are given in the descriptive text. It is not necessary to scrutinize the 
pictures in order to solve the puzzles. 

 TIMEQUEST uses high resolution EGA mode to display its graphics. It employs a 
very pleasant 16-color palette. In general, the style is very similar to 
Spellcasting 101. Some effort was made to reflect the arts and trends of the 
locales being depicted. For example, the graphics have strong Oriental flavors 
when depicting the various Peking sceneries. Overall I think it is fair to say 
that the graphics _enhance_ the game, but by no means are they the main 
attractions. (Note: TIMEQUEST will play on Tandy machines, but apparently only 
black and white graphics will be displayed.)

 I do have a slight complaint over the graphics. Legend chose to use the same 
picture to represent the same scenery over different time zones. For example, 
the tavern in Dover looked exactly the same in 1940 A.D. as it did in 1361 
B.C., even down to the innkeeper and the clothes he wore. I am quite sure that 
this was done mainly to keep the game size under control, but it did put extra 
burden on my common sense. 

 TIMEQUEST supports Adlib, Soundblaster and Roland sound boards. Music is not 
abundant throughout the game, but where it is used, it is used very 
effectively. RealSound (TM) technology is employed to play digitized sound 
effects either through the PC speaker or through a sound card. Most of these 
effects are nicely done and add to the atmosphere the game creates. I 
especially like the sounds of children giggling in the King Tut scene. Note 
that you can only get RealSound if you play from a hard disk and that you no 
longer need to load SOUND.COM yourself in order for your Adlib or Soundblaster 
to work.

 The game has a mapping feature that displays all the places the player can 
visit in a given locale in an overhead view. This would be a very useful 
feature in future games. In this game, because of the small number of places 
in each time zone, mapping is really unnecessary.

 The game interface used in TIMEQUEST is very flexible and very well thought 
out. There are two long columns on the left side of the screen which contain 
all the verbs, prepositions and nouns that the program recognizes at each game 
location. A compass rose at the top of the screen shows all the availabale 
exits. All the words, compass rose and the objects in the pictures are mouse 
sensitive. In fact you can rather effortlessly play the entire game with the 
mouse if you choose to do so. 

 On the other hand, you can configure the game to eliminate the graphics, the 
words columns and the menus entirely and play it as a text only adventure 
game. Although the purists may be tempted to do just that, I would recommend 
that you play it at least once with the graphics on. A lot of effort has been 
put into the paintings and the attention to details is excellent. 

 Playing the game with the menus on also makes the game slightly easier. When 
you talk to the characters in the game, after choosing "ask" character's name 
and "about", you will be presented with all the topics that you can ask. This 
is especially helpful to those who feel overwhelmed by the sheer size of the 
game. 

 I played the entire game by typing out commands. The parser was excellent and 
could understand and handle complete sentences. Although the game vocabulary 
did not seem as big as a typical Infocom game, it was quite painless to 
communicate my wishes and I didn't feel the frustration of having to _guess_ 
the right words.

 The save and restore features are also worth mentioning. Not only were they 
extrememly easy to use, but you can have up to 128(!) saved games without 
having to change directory. 

 The game comes in either the 5.25" (360K) or 3.5" (720K) formats. It can be 
easily installed on a hard disk but does require 4.7 meg of storage. Floppy 
play is supported but the RealSound (TM) digitized sound effects are not 
available in that mode. Surprisingly, this game only requires a 512K machine. 
Copy protection scheme is off-disk. It involves 3 passwords from a single 
card. The scheme is worked into the storyline and is only needed the first 
time you step into the time machine after each reboot. Very unobtrusive and 
very painless!

 The game documentation includes a password/code card, a mission briefing 
booklet which describes the 10 historical events that make up the 10 missions, 
and an instruction booklet on how to install and play the game. This also 
includes a brief discussion by the author on the accuracy of the historical 
events depicted in the game as well as liberties that he had taken. Very 
interesting reading.

 In summary, this is a large and difficult game when compared to other 
adventure games published this year. I would compare it to Hollywood Hijinx 
and Ballyhoo in terms of size of difficulty. (Note: Hollywood and Ballyhoo are 
both Infocom text adventure games.) Its puzzles are logical and deliciously 
devious. It has nice but not splashy graphics and sounds. This game is _not_ 
for everyone. If you cherish fond memories of playing through Infocom 
adventures or if you find the current batch of games a bit too easy and eager 
for a tougher but fair mental challenge, then you won't want to miss this one! 
I, for one, am looking forward to the next project that Bob Bates undertakes.