WHAT CAN I GET FOR £2.99

A cut above. £2.99 is still a budget price but it ought to mean that you get a little bit extra, a little more thought, originality, more programming expertise. We look at the budget elite and ask, "Can you tell the difference?"

CLAWS OF DESPAIR
Label: Players
Author: Peter Iveson
Price: £2.99
Joystick: none
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: John Gilbert

The standard of budget priced text and graphic adventures is generally not that hot but here's one fantasy game that is worth playing.

The plot itself isn't terrifically original - you're on a quest to meet the owner of the talons in the title. That's necessary before you find the object of the whole effort, the Staff of Sarfrin (which sounds just like a kind of sugar substitute).

There are few traps but many decisions to be made. Should you kill the guards who are beating up an old woman in the poor quarter of the city, or can her death be turned to your advantage? Your attitude to murder is important to your success. For instance, you can't even seem to begin your quest until you kill three guards.

When you're out of the city of Carloon the going gets tough. A red dragon will demand your blood. The tracker will try his best to kill. And the sand sharks are always there waiting for you to put a foot wrong.

In fact sand is there in abundance in the game's desert maze which seems to stretch out forever in all directions. One disappointment is that many of the desert scenes use the same picture which takes 30 seconds to draw each time. Irritating if you get stuck for a long time.

Claws of Despair is an above average adventure game at a price anyone can afford. The text is imaginatively written and the full-screen graphics, although slow in execution, set the scene admirably.

Players
£1.99

More a cause of despair as it turns out: another less than wonderful offering from Interceptor's new Players label. It is somewhat better than JTTCOESH. but still suffers from similar flaws.

Your quest is to recover a Staff of Saffrin, which will save your land for reasons not quite made clear in the slightly incoherent instructions. The game - what I've seen of it - is set in a middle earth type civilisation, with inns and a walled city, plus a wizard and other magic.

Description is above average, generally well written. The full screen graphics are mostly poor though, and excruciatingly slow. This is particularly noticeable, and frustrating, in a desert maze, where the same rather dreadful picture is drawn at each of the many junctions; and since you are killed frequently, you have to reload often, when the pictures are drawn again.

Indeed, death lurks round unfairly virtually every corner, and usually there's no turning back, making play frustrating, not challenging. EXAMINE is rarely responsive, and there's an unnecessary pause each time you use it. The game is generally unfriendly. The problems are tricky, but quite original and fun.

The packaging is well designed but otherwise I'm totally unimpressed by Players. A much better idea would be to re-release some old Interceptor games like Heroes Of Karn: they're better adventures, ideally suited to a budget price and have delectable graphics. Players is not budget adventuring at its best: buy Seabase Delta or AETOASOG instead.