| ★ AMSTRAD CPC ★ GAMESLIST ★ RETURN TO OZ (c) USGOLD ★ |
Amstrad Action | Aktueller Software Markt |
TV and film tie-ins have been all the rage in recent months, with Never Ending Story, and arcade games based on everything from Superman to Doctor Who. For the most part they've been pretty dire, but the Pilg had high hopes of Return to Oz since it bears the prestigious Disney seal of approval - surely the descendants of Walt would not put their name to anything less than awesome? Hmmm ... Well, the fact is that this game is pretty ... er ... Mickey Mouse. The Cowled Crusader polished it off in 35 minutes, which is my current record for solving a game from scratch. But before you pass on to the next review in disgust, perhaps you should ponder awhile some of the innovations and interests of this little gamette. Return to Oz requires no text input whatsoever. At each stage of the game, the bottom of the screen bears a menu from which, using a combination of the space bar and the Enter key, you select one of six options. These are LOOK, TALK, SEARCH, GET, LIST, and LEAVE. Sounds good, but the actual gameplay is very limited. TALKing, for example, sounds interesting but in fact simply means getting occasional helpful messages from other characters. The other commands are similarly efficient in their operation and selection, and similarly limited in the effects they actually produce. There aren't very many puzzles in the game, and most of them are solvable provided you have the right object with you. Since you can carry all the objects in the game simultaneously, and since the program obligingly tells you which one will be effective in each case, you don't have much problem here. Return to Oz could have been a very enjoyable game for younger players, but I wonder if it isn't just a bit too limited. Certainly any Pilg who's done even a modicum of adventuring would find it very simple fare. The blurb that comes with the program says, 'While the story closely follows the plot of the film, it has been necessarily expanded to make the game more playable and more of a challenge.' If that's the case, I'm glad I didn't bother to see the film.
AMSTRAD ACTION #15 (DECEMBER 1986) |
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