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Dig, The

Things continued being dull for awhile, and then suddenly I was stuck. It wasn't a matter of easy puzzles, harder puzzles, really hard puzzles, it was non-puzzles seemingly there just to get you to learn the interface and then no idea what to do. So I got the UHS cheat (it's kind of an annoying cheat, giving hints by section rather than chronologically, making it easy to get hints you don't want), and found that there was a difficult, complex puzzle as the first real puzzle of the game. Now, this was actually my own fault because I didn't do something fairly obvious that would have made me realize what to do, but still, it was one of the most complicated puzzles in the game, and not one that should have come so early.

But after getting through that, the game actually became pretty interesting. I mean, there were actually a number of really good puzzles in it. And the 'B' movie plot took a back seat.

Not that this ever seemed like a grade-a game. It was, after all, rather elderly by the time I played it, with those primitive little stick figure characters you always see in older Sierra Games and rather unimpressive cut scenes (except for this really cool tram system that looked way better than anything else in the game). There were also some things I found pretty inexcusable. For example, if you talk to people, you are given a set number of things to ask about. If you ask about one you've asked about before, you might get a new answer, depending on where you are in the game, or they might say what they said last time. There's no way to know if it's time to ask another question, and in some cases I had to hear the same long, tedious bit of dialogue repeatedly (you can't skip dialogue when conversing, although you can skip other things). Even worse from the point of game logic, you can ask about a certain object and get a response that made sense earlier in the game, but now doesn't. You could use an object to get a machine working, ask about the object, and have a character say "if we could only get that machine working, maybe that would help us." That's just pathetic.

All the same, I was having a fair amount of fun for a large portion of the game. I cheated a tiny bit, but not too much. And then it all fell apart.

Because the end of this game is as bad as the beginning. It really seems as if they just didn't care anymore. Several puzzles involve just asking someone about something while you're near it. If you ask about it anywhere else, the characters won't say anything useful (unlike the real world, where people will usually volunteer useful information about things you ask about even if they're not standing in the same room with it). Several times you just have to ask about something at the right time and place and then the action will just play out. I cheated more towards the end, getting the kind of solutions that just annoyed me. There's also a place where you think you're almost finished when for no good reason and for no good puzzle you're forced to traipse all over the alien planet one more time. Then there's a couple of lame cut scenes and you're done.

I really did enjoy more of this game than I disliked, and it has several nice puzzles in it. And it has this terrific, moody score that deserves a better game. So if you've got a friend who can loan it to you and you don't have anything else to play, what the hell (that was my situation), but don't go out of your way for this one.

-- Charles Herold -1999