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The Helm isn't one of them. It's an example of
a really well put together game providing lots of humour
and plenty of depth. Your quest is for the Helm of Immortality
and it starts in the surroundings, most unbecoming for
this wizard, of a primitive hut.
The
major feature of the game is that it's full of really
cute responses which alternatively inflated and deflated
my ego. When waiting for input the computer addressed
me as a 'sylph-like cosmic being', 'your absolute brillianceness'
and it even said 'I patiently and eagerly await your
next wondrous command, O all intelligent one.'
Now,
this is my sort of computer: obedient, grovelling, and
slave-like. My beard dropped somewhat, however, when
asking for help or inputting words not in the vocab
list. Both are met by unhelpful, if not damned impertinent
replies that nearly made me choke on a bat wing.
The
humour, good as it was, risked being repetitive, but
I found I just ignored the useless bits of text after
a while. The actual location descriptions are usually
quite good with coloured text but no graphics.
The
game is limited to the old-fashioned two-word inputting
-- you have to use simple phrases like 'Tie rope' and
you're just lucky if you've got the right object to
tie it to.
The
puzzles that have to be solved include some code-breaking
and a rather obscure discovery concerning a thick fishing
line.
When
the program can't act on an input, it has two types
of response. One is where at least one word appears
in its vocab list and the other is where no words are
recognised) and you get cheekily ticked off for not
using the Queen's English).
It
obviously doesn't match the more expensive disk-based
games, but for £2.50 I think it deserves a place in
any adventurer's collection, particularly if you enjoy
a really sycophantic computer doing your bidding.
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