doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee) (02/09/85)
Game review:
Murder on the Zinderneuf (Electronic Arts) C-64 disk list:$40 discount:$30
One player -- one joystick required
Overall grade: B-
Set in the mid '30s on a dirigible bound from England to America.
One of the 16 passengers is missing (presumably pushed overboard).
As one of the world's most prominent detectives, you have been
asked to find the murderer before the Zinderneuf arrives in the U.S.
This is not an adventure type game. The scenario is different each
time you play. The murderer, victim, and motive are randomly selected.
In addition, you get to pick which famous detective you wish to be.
Although the names have been changed in deference to copyrights, the
detectives are readily seen to be: Lt. Columbo, Modesty Blaise, Miss
Marple, Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Simon Templar (The Saint),
Inspector Clouseau, and an amalgam of the American tough-guy '30s
detectives.
What doesn't change between games is the passenger list. The same
16 passengers (all but one are at least somewhat famous, dirigible trips
weren't cheap) all started out from England. These passengers always
have the same cabins, and each has a distinctive personality.
You have about 35 minutes to solve the mystery. It's not easy. You
are told immediately who's missing, but you have no suspects, no hint
as to motive. There are some physical clues you might find by searching
cabins, but at best these only suggest a line of questioning.
Substantial clues are only obtained through questioning the passengers.
Questioning consists of locating the passenger you want to question,
selecting the style of questioning (violent, friendly, seductive,
bumbling, cool, etc.), and then indicating which passenger you want
to know about.
What makes the game unusual is that the detective has to try to
match his style of questioning to the personality of the passenger
being questioned. Which detective you choose to be determines the
range of styles that you have available. After all, Inspector
Clouseau simply cannot be intimidating in the way that a tough-guy
detective can, and Miss Marple can't be seductive like Modesty Blaise.
Your questioning will undoubtedly reveal that there is a lot of activity
(especially hanky-panky) going on which is unrelated to the murder.
This provides a lot of red herrings which you have to sort through.
If you think you know whodunnit and why, you can accuse the passenger
if you can locate him. In any event, on arrival in the U.S. you get
one last chance to make an accusation. For this last-ditch accusation,
you don't need any evidence. The only reason not to make such an
accusation is that a wrong accusation will give a lower score than no
accusation at all. Even if you never accuse anyone, you are told
who the murderer was and what the motive was.
Why only a B- grade? Well, the graphics are awful. On a TV set you
could go blind, and I suspect a monitor won't help much. The choice
of colors and shapes is terrible. Secondly, the motives are (I think)
too obscure. Many are just plain off-the-wall, and you'll never solve
the case the first time you encounter that motive.
The sound effects are about average. The documentation is nice, with
lengthy descriptions of each of the passengers, a diagram showing the
cabin assignments, a short description of each of the detectives (just
enough for you to recognize them), and a history lesson about the '30s.
Alas, the diskette was written out of alignment. Even worse, it
was so far out of alignment that I had to spend 4 hours trying to
find a middle-ground alignment setting for my 1541 that would allow
me to read both this diskette and all of my others. I feel sorry
for anyone without disk alignment equipment... Also, if your 1541
can't read the diskette, it just keeps loading and loading and loading
with nary an error message! I waited 20 minutes the first time before
I caught on that something must be wrong.
--
Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug