I seem to remember this being wildly difficult and being incredibly impressed that Dan completed it himself, so I doubt I'll make it very far through, but I want to check out the opening and the atmosphere at least. I remember the text parser being really accomplished some of the time and classically limited at other times. Like, talking to the bomb and realising you could make it lose count and start again was such a fun moment. Doubt I'll get that far, though!
It's a great opening, very Adams. Quite meta as well, the first thing you get told to do when you get onto the Titanic is go to the plinth and push the button, and when you get to it the plinth says "push button for opening credits". Very Stanley Parable! I haven't actually done anything else yet, I'm popping out for a bit then I'll come back and brave the stupidly difficult puzzles!
Ah yes, I remember, this is really hard to navigate through and also full of Myst type puzzles. Also, I set the bomb countdown off, so I've got to go back there every 15 minutes to reset it! Which is funny but also kind of a pain. Met the Terry Jones parrot and it followed me around for a bit commenting on stuff which again was funny but in a slightly obnoxious way. I finally found my way to the rooms, but I don't know how I'm supposed to work out which one is mine from the weird barcode thing I was given. I think I'll have to read the manual.
So far, very nice atmosphere and fun characters, but it's all a bit irritating as well. I think it could really benefit from a remake - keep the comedy and the visuals, but do it all in lovely hi-res full 3D and soften off all the rough gameplay edges (it's mainly the navigation issue so far, which would be improved by changing to 3D space, I think, plus maybe a few signs or something - although maybe feeling lost is intentional).
Ah. The manual is actually just a fictional in-flight magazine with no actual helpful information in it! I think the pattern here is 'good comedy and atmosphere, bad game'. Time for a walkthrough!
I've looked at a couple of walkthroughs (needed two because this game is so impenetrable only one isn't enough) and fucking hell I can't believe anyone ever completed this. It must have taken a saintly amount of patience. Take the bomb thing, for instance: there's a bomb with a button saying 'press to disarm'. This is a trick and actually arms the bomb. Okay, so you might guess that in a ship full of malfunctioning robots, and it's quite funny. But then you do have to keep using the crappy navigation to go back through dozens of rooms to reset the countdown every fifteen minutes at least otherwise it's game over. And the puzzle is: if you try to blindly enter passwords for no reason (it's a thirty character password, so there's no reason to think you could guess at it) the bomb will sometimes pick a random dialogue bark. One of these has the password in it, though it isn't highlighted and doesn't stand out in any way. I remember being there when Dan guessed this and I'm still flabbergasted, frankly.
I can't be bothered to follow these walkthroughs the whole way while struggling with the navigation UI, so I'm done with this!
(Also, I take it back that this would be great for a remake!)
Rating: Red
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