Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!bellcore!bellcore!quasar From: quasar@bellcore.com (Laurence Brothers) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games Subject: Re: Eye of the Beholder Message-ID: <1991May28.122956@bellcore.com> Date: 28 May 91 16:29:56 GMT References: Sender: usenet@bellcore.bellcore.com (Poster of News) Reply-To: quasar@bellcore.com Organization: Bell Communications Research, Inc. Lines: 50 I too have just bought the game. The actual programming seems to have been done moderately well. But there is a major problem with the game (I've done the first three levels so far with no sweat). This problem is actually endemic to the whole style of game. Basically, the game is far too tediously the same from place to place. Most games with perspective view share the problem of having all walls look basically the same. If you have to stop to map, you lose all the feeling (such as it is) of actually being in the little world of the game. Some other games have workarounds to this problem. For example: * Dungeon Master (version 1, anyhow) has a simple enough dungeon layout so you don't have to map, and can actually remember where things are. * Bane of the Cosmic Forge has more variety from place to place, so it is somewhat easier to remember where you are and what the map looks like. Also, their perspective view seems to hold more in it, perhaps because it is mostly not in little dungeon corridors which block line-of-sight. * DragonWars provides an automapper. And various games without automapper provide birds-eye views in various other ways. All these solutions are unsatisfactory from one perspective or another, but at least they're attempts.... Anyhow, Beholder's corridors and rooms all look pretty much the same, and (on the first few levels at least) the map layout isn't unique enough from place to place to make it reasonably possible to remember where you are without referring to a map. Thankfully, they've actually provided almost-correct maps of the first three levels, but subsequent levels will be a real pain with graph paper and almost impossible without. Another thing about the first three levels is they are all like bad D&D -- hack and slash, with the only puzzle solving being disarming traps and opening doors, and no actual plot-line or "role-play" (so-called) at all. Who wants to spend hours clicking on the "kill" button, without even any arcade action? -- Laurence R. Brothers (quasar@bellcore.com) "There is no memory with less satisfaction in it than the memory of some temptation we resisted." -- James Branch Cabell