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They
feature a split screen with a horizontally scrolling
graphics window above and a text window below. You control
a character using direction keys or a joystick, and
as you move him (yes, girls, it's a 'him' again) left
and right he wanders past moving scenery to reveal new
locations.
The
locations and objects therein can be manipulated and
explored by entering simple commands at the keyboard,
and the results of your inputs (if valid) are shown
in animated sequences on the screen. The only drawback
is that the range of commands is limited, and in Grand
Larceny you only have 24 verbs to play with.
Grand
Larceny -- don't just stand there, do something!
The
action takes place in the Grand Hotel, which you must
infiltrate and explore as you search for the plans for
a new supercomputer, probably the Commodore 512, but
I couldn't swear. One of the problems with Zim Sala
Bim was the agonising slowness with which you walked
from location to location. Grand Larceny is much
better in this respect and you can select different
action speeds using the number keys. Personally, I doubt
if anyone will want to play at less than the highest
speed, which is just about tolerable.
The
graphics aren't anything to write home about, and there
are some rather minor glitches in the scroll routines,
but the music is excellent. My only gripe was that it
didn't vary sufficiently throughout the game.
Unfortunately,
the program isn't very kind to the player if he/she
enters an inappropriate command, responding with 'I
can't' to everything it doesn't understand. Another
drawback is that there aren't a huge number of locations
to explore since the graphics are pretty greedy on memory
space.
Traditional
adventurers will probably throw up their hands in horror
at the sight of Grand Larceny (and rightly so),
but I reckon that some younger players will enjoy it.
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