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| F. Pohl's Gateway #2 - Review Part 2 by Commander Tansin A. Darcos 09/26/2013, 12:35pm PDT | ||||
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Returning to the game, the biggest problem is figuring out where anything is.
I got kind of frustrated until I discover the two directions, south east and south west, one going to the bedroom and the other going out of the apartment. And I kept confusing them on the map, I'm trying to get to the bedroom and I keep going sw into the Foyer where the elevator is or I keep going se into the bedroom when I'm trying to get out of the apartment. Once out of the apartment there are two places available, one suicidal - the elevator - and one inaccessible - the fire exit. I note that if the call from the company directing you to help comes in, and you're out in the Foyer next to the elevator, it pulls you into the living room to see it, then you - amazingly - are right back in the Foyer. 
In any case a little later is a second call where you're warned assassins are approaching. Same thing, if you're in the bedroom you magically warp through hyperspace to the living room to hear the anonymous call, then are whisked back to wherever you were, whether it was the bedroom rather than the living room or even when you are somewhere else. I guess cut scenes will do that. Thus begins Part 1 - Escape The asassins have captured the elevator; wait for that and you're dead. They also have jammed your TV set so you can't use the phone. (Interesting how, like so many science fiction stories, nobody actually thought we'd get communicators like they had in Star Trek which we now call cell phones. Even Heinlein saw it in "Between Planets" where Don Harvey answers a call on his mobile phone on his horse, in a book written in 1951.) As I noted earlier, the only way out is the improbably locked emergency stairs to the south of the Foyer. Stairs might have a lock mechanism where you have to trip an alarm to use them, but nobody, I mean nobody has a stairwell system where you can't get in at all until after the emergency occurs. They must have heavily bribed the building inspectors, nobody, I mean nobody would have approved a building for occupancy where the stairs are completely inaccessible at all until after an emergency is detected. Sometimes emergencies aren't necessarily detectable by equipment, including having to run from someone dangerous (cue video of the guy at the Washington Navy Yard who shot up the place.) The hardest part was figuring out how to find a way to do something to trigger an emergency. 
Discovering a second way out of the living room into the bedroom where there is a matchbook and a fax allowed me to realize I could set a fire in the trash in the living room. One thing you have to note is you have to say "take matches" because "take match" will use up your one and only irreplaceable match. (There are no ashtrays anywhere around. If the guy doesn't smoke, why does he only have a single match in a whole matchbook?) That was the trick, this caused a fire alarm, it was then trivial to leave the apartment, run to the exit, only now you can open the door 
and go to the roof before the assassins show up, whereupon the hovercraft from the company is there and whisks me away. We arrive near San Francisco and proceed south, and I think it might have made more sense to place it in Insranbul or someplace in the middle east; the spired tower (which is a launch assembly) reminded me of something out of the Byzantine empire, or at least, you'd think they'd put it in a remote (and cheap) piece of real estate, not replacing expensive real estate (and putting the launch facility in an extreme earthquake risk zone) like San Francisco. 
The launch vehicle reminded me of the Burj Dubai, which wouldn't even be built until decades after this game was written. It says it's Romeo Delta 2, built on what used to be Vandenberg Air Force Base. Well, that's interesting. The game says you travel South of San Francisco. From the movie "Those Lips, Those Eyes" Director (watching play): Stop! Props! (Grabs wine bottle from actor) Prop Boy: Yes, sir? Director (holding wine bottle): What is this? Prop Boy: The script said ‘a bottle of wine.' Director (mockingly): A bottle of wine. (Normal voice) It might interest you to know that "The Desert Song" is set in Morocco. You think they have Gallo wine in Morocco? I looked it up. Vandenberg AFB is located in Lompoc. Does anyone think Lompoc is anywhere near San Francisco? Lompoc is located near Santa Barbara, about 200 miles south of San Francisco. Looks like the game didn't get its facts straight. If you were going to Los Angeles or San Diego in a private plane, you'd be going there directly, not going to the other city then traveling a hundred miles in the other direction. But we're at the destination, let's forget it. So now we're at the conference room. More later, my hands are getting tired. |
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F. Pohl's Gateway #2 - Review Part 1 by 09/08/2013, 5:26pm PDT  Re: F. Pohl's Gateway #2 - Review Part 1a (correction) by 09/08/2013, 5:34pm PDT My greatest adventure game triumph by 09/08/2013, 8:10pm PDT Mine was the mime in Gabriel Knight 1 by 09/08/2013, 9:55pm PDT F. Pohl's Gateway #2 - Review Part 2 by 09/26/2013, 12:35pm PDT hahaha by 09/27/2013, 10:18pm PDT |
