Top Secret Magazine Douglas Adams: Starship Titanic

So your sitting at home, about to start playing a game on your computer. When suddenly, a huge starship (its keel) crashes through your roof and nearly destroys your house. The door opens and and out comes a robotic Door-Bot. He gives you a PET, or Personal Electronic Thing, which is the tool that you'll be using the rest of the game. He then asks for your help, not quite describing the problem at hand, you have no choice but to agree.

Once you've agreed to help (in some way or another) you enter the ship, and take the elevator to the Embarkation Lobby. During your ride in the elevator, you discover that the ship's central intelligence is being "lobotomized", and the staff robots are not functioning properly. You must find a way to fix the problem if you are to get back home.

After registering with a rather sarcastic Desk-Bot, and answering an assortment of questions via your Chat-O-Matic, you are assigned to a room in the Super Galactic Traveler class (the lowest possible class). You then meet the Bell-Bot which is very unhelpful in every way. He then leaves you to find your own way around the ship.

At this point, you'll notice the limited movement controls that are given to you. You move around by moving the mouse to the top, bottom, left, right, or center of the screen. The mouse cursor will then change to an arrow indicating which way you are permitted to move. Movement can be very frustrating when trying to move somewhere specific. When you select a direction to move, you are presented with a short animation of movement in,

whichever way you clicked. Graphics in this game are spectacular, and give you the feeling of really being a a huge, luxurious starship. The sounds are top notch, and include great ambient sounds. Though the music gets old
real fast.
After wandering around helplessly for quite a while, you begin to wonder what your supposed to be doing. This is rather difficult to to do. In order to get anywhere in this game, you must listen VERY carefully to anything and everything that is said. The Bots will aid you in solving any of the puzzles if you just listen.

Interacting with the Bots is done via the Chat-O-Matic in your PET (Personal Electronic Thing). This is one of the best parts of the game. To talk to a Bot, you simply approach one, and you are then greeted. From here you can type anything you want to them. The surprisingly understand quite a bit. Though at some times, its rather frustrating when they refuse, or avoid a question.
Each Bot has its own personality, and own opinions of what's going on around them. For example, the Lift-Bot is an old war vet, who disapproves of the Parrot, and the Parrot is obsessed with pistachio nuts and chickens. The Bots include the Door-Bot, Desk-Bot, Bell-Bot, Lift-Bot, Bar-Bot, Maitre'D-Bot, Suc-U-Bus, and Row-Bot, not to mention the hilarious bomb, and parrot.

There is much, much more to this game, including an estimated 60-70 hours of gameplay. I'd suggest this game to anyone interested in adventure or puzzle games. Overall, a great adventure game with plenty of challenging puzzles.

Company:
The Digital Village
www.tdv.com

Category:
Adventure

NOTES:

Interest: 80%
Maniability :85%
Graphics: 90%
Sound : 90%
Originality : 80%

TOTAL : 85%

Requirements:

Operating System:
Windows 95/98

Processor:
Pentium 100MHz or higher

Memory:
16 MB of RAM

Hard Drive:
160 MB minimum

Sound Card:
Windows compatible sound card

Video:
16-bit (High Color) cabable video card and monitor with DirectX 5.x

Joshua Westhoven