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No-one really mentioned the fact that despite the trimmings
all three games were ages old and out of date -- and
for a very good reason. Half the appeal was precisely
because the games WERE ages old -- they were each classics
of their own kind from a time when adventuring and Middle
Earth/Underground Empire were almost synonymous. And
there's no better excuse to stock up on some classic
and enjoyable titles than to pop-out and get a compilation.
Unfortunately, I don't believe these facts apply to
Silicon Dreams. Of the three games here, only
one can pretend to be a classic of any kind, and that's
Snowball. The other two are more recent releases
which therefore not only fail to show any real benefit
from the 'revamping' process but also lack the charisma
of the older titles.
However,
if you haven't got these games, this compilation is
of course good value for money. And I don't want to
give the impression that I think the games are poor.
They're not, and Snowball in particular is an
excellent adventure.
For
the ignorant amongst you, the games form a trilogy concerning
Earth's colonisation of the planet Eden. In Snowball,
Kim Kimberley awakes from suspended animation to find
something wrong with the vast spaceship on which she
is travelling along with thousands of others to the
new planet. Return to Eden starts off with Kim
escaping from a sentence of death and locating the city
of Enoch, prepared in advance for the colonists by robots,
but now running amok and attempting to wipe out the
very humans for which it was built.
[This screenshot was not in the original
review]
Finally,
Worm in Paradise jumps ahead by a hundred years
or so and shows us a totalitarian society in decay.
The player awakes in a 'dream parlour' after an excellently
conceived dream sequence and must then navigate the
highways and byways of an advanced technological society
to take over the government and (perhaps) put things
to rights.
All
three games now feature 'multi-tasking' graphics (though
only Snowball was originally text-only) and improved
parsers. And with the exception of Snowball they've
all been reviewed by the Wiz in previous issues. All
three can be recommended, but don't expect either the
atmosphere or the 'classic' quality of Jewels of
Darkness.
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