FAX BOX
Game: Venom
Publisher: Mastertronic
Price: £1.99
Reviewer: Mike Gerrard

Good, I thought, when the first screen appeared, a Mastertronic adventure that looks promising after a few disappointments. But the promise didn't last long... no longer than the second crash inside 20 minutes, which had me pulling the plug on what might have been an enjoyable game.

The tale is set in Armosin, a world of magic and danger, the danger coming from Traklan, the proverbial evil one who keeps the realm in perpetual fear. The good guy is naturally you, Rikka, though you'll need the help of Arrel who is Ruler of the Lost Realm. Venom is described as an icon-driven adventure, which it isn't. Can we clear this up once and for all, adventure authors and software houses? An icon is an image that you click on with a mouse or joystick to save you typing in words. An adventure like this one that presents you with a list of words to move your cursor along and choose from is not an icon-driven adventure. Words are just words, not icons, understood?

Right, having got that off my chest, the screen layout of the game is very nice indeed. You get a decent graphic in the top-left quarter, or where there's no piccie you get part of a pocket history of the land of Armosin, sometimes containing useful clues. The text's a bit flowery, but I can live with that.

What I couldn't live with were the responses I was getting from the game when combining the available verbs at top-right of screen with the words in the location description beneath. As I was mounted on a horse at the start, with a tie-rail beneath and an inn to the north, I naturally tried TIE HORSE. I was told I needed a thong. EXAMINE RAIL. Good, there's a thong there, which seemed to have been added to my inventory. TIE HORSE. 'You'll tie yourself into a knot,' I was told. NORTH. 'What, on a horse?' So I entered EAST instead and the game promptly crashed.

I re-loaded, and going EAST was OK this time, so I wandered around on my horse for a while, saw an interesting monastery, avoided falling into a river, then back to the start and the tie-rail. I went through the same routine, but this time remembered to dismount. In the inn there was, naturally, an innkeeper. 'Full character interaction,' the cassette cover promises, telling you that to talk to a character you first select the TALK verb from the list, then highlight the name of one of the characters present. As the only people present were me and the innkeeper, and I wasn't (quite) talking to myself yet, I chose TALK and highlighted INNKEEPER. 'That makes no sense,' was the response. Two inputs later as I tried to examine a locked door, the game crashed again.

Now this wasn't a pre-production review copy, this was a finished game! The first crash came using the keyboard inputs, the second with a Kempston joystick attached, which the game allegedly supports. After the recent fatal bugs in Kentilla, and in the Amstrad version of Rigel's Revenge (which is fine on the Spectrum), Mastertronic really ought to get their play-testing sorted out or adventure fans will desert them.

Label: Mastertronic
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

At first glance, Venom looks like one of those Infocom adventures. You know, the ones that print their vocabulary up in the corner alongside the graphics. Venom is one of those adventures in which you play the part of someone with a funny name that ends in a vowel who has travel across a land with another funny name that begins with a vowel with a friend who also has funny name that ends with a vowel. At the bottom of the screen is a window which contains the room descriptions which are short and clear, but don't really tell you much. Above that is a scrolling window which tells you all the interesting stuff like where the exits are or what you can see. And, above that are more two more windows. The graphics window and the word window. (I'll call it the word window because I'm too lazy and it's too late to keep typing the Vocabulary Window.) The graphics for the most part do give a good representation of where you are, and are clear and colourful. Up to this point, the adventure is wonderful.

The word window is where it all falls down. The game has a vocabulary of around 30 words, all accessible from the window via a joystick. No typing involved here. This may be a good idea for some 16-bit micros that can handle huge vocabularies, but for game like this, it's just a waste of space and makes the game amazingly easy.

MACHINES: Commodore 64, Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Mastertronic
PRICE: £1.99

Venom is an icon-driven adventure of some complexity. Listen carefully. Picture top left, verb list top right, constantly scrolling current reply middle left, characters present middle right, narrative text at bottom. Using joystick or cursor keys (I couldn't fathom the joystick action on the Spectrum +2, perhaps because I had the wrong type) words are picked off the list (selected by pressing zero rather than enter on the Spectrum, would you believe?) and then control passes to the narrative text for the next word Rather like Koboyashi, but slicker.

One of my main problems was having decided on my verb and selected it, the object I had in mind became unavailable as the narrative text changed before I could get hold of it.

Mundane plot. You, friend of the ruler of Armosin, lost land of the Argonath, have arranged to meet in the Dancing Drayman Inn, to plot to overthrow the Evil One, Traklan, and his Hordes. (I would have preferred to stay put, sink a few pints, and listen to the Pogues on the juke box).

The Dancing Drayman has decor and furniture like a transport caff, other graphics are better. Pretty soon the icons begin to irritate. Give me proper text, not clingfilm-wrapped pre-packaged icon text gimmickry, any day.