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RAMA

That's right, sequences, patterns, human and alien math, it's all here. Go ahead, add 13434 and 23432 in base 8. I dare you.

If you're not into math, don't even start this game. Let me elaborate: if you're not into tedious adventure games, don't start this one. Because Rama is just plain boring. After a rousing start of watching video e-mail from about a 1000 people, you are sent out into the wilderness to find little tiles and use them in sequencing arrays to get through doors so you can get more tiles. Sound like fun? I didn't think so.

Co-written by sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke, one of the driest and dullest of all sci-fi authors, the story is about as gripping as toast, although I must have gone about a third of the way through the game (via UHS cheats, and when that still wasn't enough, a walkthrough) and I'm probably exaggerating to say there's a "story." There's a premise, a bunch of stock characters, who are integrated into the scenes with what looks like the sort of fake blue-screen technique you see in bad movies, and a lot of picking up stuff (to the game's credit, the stuff is generally visible, and you aren't expected to move the mouse over the screen pixel by pixel.

The visuals are the general sort of computer-generated graphics that have taken over the world since Myst, and they're fine, but rather too mechanical and flat to draw you into the game. The robots are intelligently designed and well thought out, as could be expected from a game that seems to be entirely cerebral, and occasionally there's something eye-catching, but it's nothing you haven't seen done better in Obsidian.

The game seems to have been designed by people who don't really play games. There are places where every time you arrive you'll have to see a little tedious animation. Even if you can't see it you'll hear it, and are expected to stand there while you listen to machines grind. It's also one of these games where you have to keep revisiting to see if anything new has arrived.

And if you do like math puzzles? Well, my genius friend says he used to do math in base 16 for fun ("ask him if he used to get beat up," my wife said), and he thought the puzzles didn't sound tough enough. "A puzzle in base 16 would be interesting, but if it's just addition, I've done that."

-- Charles Herold -1999