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An excellent and very innovative parser-based adventure game, Metropolis is
probably the first PC game in history that offers digitized voices through PC speakers
(predating Sierra's Silpheed and Access' Mean Streets by a few years). In this
futuristic game, you play a security agent for giant software corporation IC&D,
assigned to investigate crimes that have been committed in Metropolis. Gameplay is
similar to Sierra's early AGI adventures such as King's Quest 3: you type commands
in plain English and maneuver your character around with cursor keys. Once you solve
a crime, you will gain access to the "zoom tube" to another level of the city, where
another crime awaits your sleuthing skills. There are 10 crimes in all, each one more
difficult than the last. The parser is not up to par with Infocom games, but it is
adequate. One of the game's innovations is that it allows you to communicate in spoken
English, as opposed to "TALK TO MAN" or "ASK MAN ABOUT X" in most interactive fiction
games. You can use phrases like "do you know where the disk is?" and "I would like to
buy a disk please." The irony is that the game will often understand ONLY such
sentences - simple ones such as "BUY DISK" will not work. In contrast to most adventure
games, the crimes are solved mostly by asking the right questions, not by using items
in your inventory. This makes Metropolis perhaps the world's first conversation-driven
game, and the results are surprisingly good. The plot unravels at a good pace, and
there are many futuristic gadgets to use, and interesting droids to talk to, that
you'll likely forget about the absence of inventory-based puzzles. All in all, a
wonderfully original, innovative, and captivating underdog that deserves much more
than its obscure status. |
