Producer: Crusader
Retail Price: £2.99
Author: D Hawkins

You might remember Crusader as the people who some months ago put out that dinosaur adventure which came complete with a superb poster of all the prehistoric monsters that once roamed the earth. Well, as far as I know there are no posters with this one, but there's still the will to impress because the game is a good one. The instructions don't acknowledge use of PAW, but if you think of Wizard's Warrior as offering just about every advanced vocabulary technique of that utility, you can guess how effective its word-crunching is.

You are the sorcerer Randorlorn and your task is to protect the young Reid, the Wizard's Warrior of the title, till the child is fully grown. The only trouble is the young chap was kidnapped before you could prepare him for his face-to-face confrontation with the black wizard Sator.

Frightened by the implications of the kidnap, you hurry off to the Great White Council and they soon point you in the right direction. What you'll need is help in the form of four trusty warriors: Talas, the master thief; Glum, the dwarf king; Mortain, Prince of Ah Ah, I mean Vo'Oiver; and Fellon of Dynasty, or rather the Great Elven Lord.

You begin the quest in your lower, where just about every door seems to have been blown from its hinges as if by the Great Southern Storm (see THE SHOCK THAT SWEPT BRITAIN - WHY WERENT WE TOLD? in News Input). There you gather your four henchmen and then it's off to rescue the young rascal Reid, giving the ragged rocks a rest.

The first frame of your room in the tower, with immovable heavy chest and west door blown asunder, has an accompanying picture which is a plausible attempt at 3-D graphics. It's reasonably quickly drawn - always a good point in my book.

And here you first meet the game's marvellously complex vocabulary: to get the items in the chest you must TAKE ALL FROM CHEST, as TAKE ALL only works on things outside the container. The EXAMINE command, which can be abbreviated to X (TAKE and OPEN can be reduced to T and O respectively), is very powerful throughout and in this first frame X DOOR results in 'The door has seen better days'. (This contrasts with X STRAW in the stables, the response to which isn't quite so interesting: 'The straw looks like straw'.)

Moving off through the west portal and north to the store cupboard we see that SEARCH and EXAMINE have different results. X STORE gives 'The pile of rubbish is the result of several hundred years of untidiness. It's a wonder that you ever find anything in here' while SEARCH STORE takes the story a little further with 'Searching the rubbish you find a sturdy saddle'. The saddle clearly goes with the horse but picking up the saddle may prove difficult; however, the solution here is mercifully straightforward, and relates to the differing weights of objects which the mechanisms of this adventure take into account.

A strong theme throughout Wizard's Warrior is the interaction of the main characters. Enlisting their help is not difficult and their friendship is furthered with the help of a set of speech formats, which include the likes of SAY TO TALAS "HELLO", ASK MORTAIN "WHAT ARE YOU CARRYING", and TALAS "TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF".

Using such constructions you can direct the four main characters to tasks which suit their characters better than your own, whether because of greater strength or thieving abilities or other factors. This feature is the one that gives the game a real sparkle and that sense of playing a really good adventure.

Wizard's Warrior is a super adventure with a very natty-looking screen. Above the body of the screen there's always a status line bearing your score, the number of moves so far and one or two words summarising the current location - it's very useful when invoking 'I' for inventory to have the location remain onscreen as a reminder. The vocabulary is very full, with sophisticated routines including convoluted grammatical constructions.

DIFFICULTY: not difficult
GRAPHICS: rather pleasing, 3-D style
PRESENTATION: very smart
INPUT FACILITY: sophisticated verb/noun
RESPONSE: fast

FAX BOX
Game: Wizard's Warrior
Publisher: Crusader Computing, 18 Henley Wood Road, Earley, Reading, Berks RG6 2EE
Price: £2.99
Reviewer: Mike Gerrard

Crusader's first release was Prehistoric Adventure, which I thought was okay but nothing to get wildly excited about. Wizard Warrior is much better presented, and from the Layout and parser I'd say it was PAW'd, but the utility isn't credited on my pre-production copy and notes. The better presentation is marred by some careless programming, though, which spoiled the adventure for me before I'd gone past the first dozen or so locations. I Like to think I'm going to be presented with a challenge from the game, not from the parser.

The story sounded interesting enough, being yet another tale of funny names. You play the role of Randorlorn, a sorcerer and it was your duty to protect the child Reld from harm, this babe being the Wizard Warrior of the title. When Reld grew up he was to face... yes, an arch black wizard, Sator, in a fight to the death and so restore peace and good and all that stuff to the kingdom. Now you must recruit four great warriors and set off in search of Reid.

In your room at the start you see the remains of your shattered door lying about the floor and "you study the western exit that it once blocked off with remorse" (that well-known building material.) You see a staff and a chest, which naturally you open. LOOK IN CHEST: "In the chest you can see an unlit torch and a large travelling cloak." GET CLOAK: "There isn't one of those here." Oh dear, it's going to be one of those games, is it? Guess what the parser wants. TAKE TORCH FROM CHEST "The unlit torch is too heavy for you to lift." What, here I am carrying a large wooden staff and I can't lift a torch? Let it at least say "Your hands are full." You can only carry a few objects, which is a nuisance as you have to drop things and go back for them from time to time.

Early on you have to saddle a horse, but you can't SADDLE HORSE you must PUT SADDLE ON HORSE. When the time comes to remove the saddle you can't GET SADDLE or GET SADDLE FROM HORSE, you must REMOVE SADDLE FROM HORSE, at which point I got the curious response: "You remove the saddle from the horse's back. The sturdy saddle is too heavy for you to lift." Oh yes, well how did I get it off the horse's back, then, a mysterious invisible fork-lift truck?

I gave up this game at the first major problem, when I knew I had to trade something with a shopkeeper, but could I find the right input to do this? in the end I looked at the cheat-sheet, which merely said that the shopkeeper liked second-hand goods, which at least reduced the objects I could offer him to two. But all commands failed: SELL SADDLE TO SHOPKEEPER, OFFER SADDLE, GIVE SADDLE, TRADE SADDLE, SELL SADDLE, SAY TO SHOPKEEPER "BUY SADDLE", SHOW SADDLE... when I'd clocked up 250 moves and no further progress (and this on my second playing of the game and reaching this point) I admit to pulling the plug on it before I went up the wall and my dear old Speccy's keys finally wore out. Could have been good, could Wizards Warrior... but wasn't.