INHERIT THE EARTH: QUEST FOR THE ORB

From New World Computing and The Dreamers Guild
Reviewed by Ron "People for the Eating of Tasty Animals" Dippold
          Computer        Graphics        Memory          Disk SpaceMinimum   386/33          VGA             2 Megs          16 Megs Max/Rec.Control: Mouse  Sound: SoundBlaster 8/16/32, PAS-16 FM/OPL, Gravis UltraSound, Aria,         Audio Source, Roland SCC/MT-32, AWE-32  Notes: Works great under OS/2Reviewed floppy version on: 486/66, Mouse, Gravis UltraSound, Roland SCCReviewer recommends: 486.  The game is actually pretty system friendly.

* My dog thinks he's human, my cat thinks she's God

So what do you get when you cross Mad Max with Bambi? Well, not exactlyINHERIT THE EARTH. This is postapocalyptic for humans, but not for Morphs.Think of an interactive version of Walt Disney's "Robin Hood" without thecheesy music and you have the flavor.

The Humans are all dead, or at least gone from the Earth. Before theyleft, they raised several species of animal to sentience, bipedallocomotion, and gave them the power of speech. These animals refer tothemselves as Morphs, we might call them furries. The known world isorganized in a mostly peaceful feudalism, organized by animal type.

The Orb of Storms has been stolen - it's a mysterious globe used by theanimals to predict the weather and seasons. Rif the Fox is suspect,because... well, he's a fox. Forget racism - it just can't compare withspeciesism. The Boars are holding his main squeeze hostage, and the ElkKing of the Forest has an arrest warrant out for him, both pending hisrecovery of the Orb. This is where you come in. You control Rif and histwo companion guards, Eeah the Elk and Okk the Boar. They're there to helpyou find the Orb, or kill you. This is known as an incentive plan.

* Kitten: Small homicidal muffin on legs

Inherit the Earth is extremely system friendly. It installed without ahitch, runs great under OS/2, needs only two megabytes of memory, and workswith all popular sound cards. At 16 megabytes, it's about average fortoday's games (anyone else remember TIME ZONE, when twelve uncompressed140K disk side was considered astronomical? Oh well). I had no problemsat all with the game, and encountered only one bug - it didn't affect gameplay, just made a rope on screen disappear.

The only thing I'd have to complain about is that the game doesn't appearto save your reading speed and sound/music preferences with saved games. When I quit and came back, my those would be reset.

* "For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things *to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks." * --Terry Pratchett#

The other production values in Inherit the Earth are also absolutely topnotch. The graphics are great and the voices are absolutely superb.

Let me harp on that last for a minute... digitized speech in games isusually so bad that I turn it off. The producers get some of their staffor their families to do voices, and it shows. ULTIMA VIII had some prettyatmospheric voices if you had the voice pack, but sometimes the voices wereso mutated that you couldn't understand them.

For Inherit the Earth, it sounds like they actually hired some voiceactors, or people with theater or radio experience. The voices are clear,the personalities come through, and most of all the actors are getting intothe spirit of things. Usually the actors sound like they're vaguelyembarrassed, but here they're really into the cartoon spirit of this game.

Unfortunately, I only got to hear the voices in the first part of the game- only the CD version, which wasn't out yet when I bought the game, hasfull speech.

* We got rid of the kids - the cats are allergic

There are at least four different types of display in this game. Thebottom always has a portrait of Rif and the person he's interacting with,along with your choices and inventory. The top of the screen has yourenvironment.

The first type of display is your standard KING'S QUEST type display - onescreen that you can move around in. Pick things up, go behind things, tryto find the exits. All three members of the party move around.

The second type is a scrolling orthogonal display used for villages, mazesand the like. Like Ultima VIII, but closer to the action and without asmuch to interact with. Again, all three members of your party are visible.In this mode, when you enter a building, a window pops up with the firsttype of display that you can move around in.

The third type of display is the map. On this, your party appears as justa glowing dot which you move around the scrolling landscape. When you getclose enough to something interesting, you zoom in to one of the closeupdisplays.

The final mode is the occasional interactive scene, where you'll see hand-drawn pictures appropriate for the occasion.

In each of the above modes, the graphics are very well done. The portraitsat the bottom change based on character mood. The characters walk andanimate well. The Boar lift his shirt and scratches himself if he's notdoing anything else. All the characters look like they're walkingrealistically, given their physical differences from humans.

* If you eliminate smoking and gambling, you will be amazed to find that almost all an Englishman's pleasures can be, and mostly are, shared by his dog. -- G. B. Shaw#

Movement and conversation are very easy. You just move the mouse to whereyou want to go and click. In scrolling displays, you can hold down themouse button for continuous movement.

This game has something I would have killed for in Ultima VIII: anintelligent movement algorithm. Click across the river, and the game issmart enough to figure out that you need to go downstream to that bridge,cross, and then go back to the destination. Usually you can just clickanywhere and the game will take you there. Your companions are usuallypretty smart as well, and will catch up if they make a mistake. No hasslemovement - what a concept!

Conversation is easy, the standard "click on a subject to talk about" typeinterface we've come to expect. The options are fairly intelligent, youwon't just parrot everything another character tells you.

The game is also fairly smart about what can be done with an object. Whenyour cursor moves over something it'll figure out what you might want to dowith it and give you that choice. This is nice at times, but irritating atothers, where what it thinks I want to do isn't what I want to do. Alittle too clever for its own good at times.

* Better not take a dog on the space shuttle, because if he sticks his *head out when you're coming home his face might burn up. -- Handey

Yes, believe it or not, an adventure game is supposed to have a story.This one has the past filled in more than most bother to, and it certainlymakes the game more interesting. The basic concept - humans raise animalsto intelligence, then disappear - isn't new, but it's a perfect concept foran adventure game. As you progress in the game, pieces of the past willfill themselves in.

You actually have an advantage over your characters - you know what abattery is, or an access card, so it's not nearly as large a challenge foryou to figure out where it's supposed to go as it would be for Rif theMorph. The game actually uses this to its advantage when dealing with theOrbs, but sometimes it seems the background is underutilized.

The game itself is divided into three parts - the beginning, middle, andend. Har har. Cheap humor, aside, however, that's what happens. Thefirst part of the game takes place in the "known lands" to the south.After you do the appropriate adventure things, then you'll move on to newlands. Twice.

The dialogue is very good - there's lots of low-key humor scatteredthroughout the game, as well as overt humor, such as the "Who's on First"takeoff. Each character has their own "voice" (digitized voices aside) andpersonality. No complaints there.

I do have three reservations about the game.

First, it's very easy. I finished it in three days. This is not anadventure for die-hard Infocom fans. You can give it to your kids. Whatto do next is usually quite obvious, and the game gives you plenty of hintsfor the only somewhat tough puzzle. On the positive side of this, all yournecessary actions are logical. There's none of this Sierra or LEGEND OFKYRANDIA crud, where you have to resort to trying every item with everyother item to find the totally meaningless association the plotter madebetween two items. Now if only they kept this sanity and made it a bittougher.

Second, it seemed as if there was a bit too much running around for runningaround's sake in the first part of the game. It takes a certain minimumamount of time to get from one place to another, and I thought that thiswas abused in the early part of the game as a method to extend game play.I was _sick_ of the Rat's Cave after the fifth time I had to navigate it.

Finally, it seemed like there was something missing... You have this richbackground and beautiful created world, but it's mostly empty. There areonly about twenty characters that you really interact with. In theSanctuary, for instance, there are plenty of characters running around, andlots of houses, but the houses are all locked, and nobody will talk to you.There's only a single character in that whole complex who you can interactwith. I would have liked to see more development in this regard, whichwould have also helped fill out the game.

* Cats don't hunt seals. They would if they knew what they were and whereto find them. But they don't, so that's all right. * -- Terry Pratchett,_The Unadulterated Cat_

So what's the verdict? Well, die-hard adventurers are going to bedisappointed - it's just too easy. On the other hand, it's a great gamefor people who aren't normally adventure players or the kids. The sound isgreat and the graphics are beautiful.

I love Infocom type games, but I still had a good time exploring the worldand playing the game. I was disappointed that it was done with so soon,which wouldn't have happened if I wasn't enjoying myself. The endingleaves the possibility for a sequel wide open, even hinting quite stronglyat the plot. I hope we get the sequel and that it gets a little more inthe plot department.

* This review was cruelly tested on small, furry animals. It is alsoCopyright (C) 1994 by Ron Dippold for Game Bytes Magazine. All rightsreserved.