Antic, v3(11)

~1 minute read

Mar 1985

product reviews

Cutthroats

Michael Ciraolo and Jack Powell

Infocom
55 Wheeler Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 492-1031
$34.95, 48K -- disk

You're about to get yourself into very deep trouble, says the Cutthroats packaging. It's true! The latest in Infocom's True Tales of Adventure series will trouble serious fans, due to several seemingly illogical and arbitrary key puzzles.

Set on Hardscrabble Island, Cutthroats makes you the murky port's top diver and local shipwreck expert.

A note offering adventure is slipped under your door. And as you are drawn into the adventure, you meet some real charmers -- Pet the Rat, Weasel, Johnny Red. You'll need to learn how to deal with these locals. Some will kill you, some hold the key to sunken treasure and winning the game with 250 points.

There are four shipwrecks offshore and you must decide which to salvage. The game has more than one major branch and solution.

Cutthroats comes with Infocom's usual excellent packaging, including a hilarious "True Tales of Adventure Magazine", a tide chart, the "Hardscrabble Island Historical Society's Book of Shipwrecks" and so on.

The trouble is that Cutthroats is very time dependent and does not allow extensive exploring. You must be at certain places at exact times or you will forever wander the island. You must waste time waiting for meetings and discover secret meetings.

The rigid story-development made us feel as though we were being overly manipulated. There was little illusion of spontaneity.

There are plenty of puzzles, but only some are clever and appropriate to the story. Unfortunately, other puzzles are obscure, illogical and nearly clueless. Be prepared to mail away for the official invisible ink cluebook to this game.

Even when not up to the company's highest standard, Infocom text adventures are way ahead of the competition. Still, we frankly expected better from Michael Berlyn, author of the superb Infidel.

This article appeared in
Antic
Mar 1985

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