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Snapshot I n a hole in the Shire, which is a particularly retarded area of Muddle Earth, there lived a Boggit called Bimbo Faggins. He was a lazy fat Boggit whose only interests in life were blowing rings and watching the Elven girls go swimming down at the old mill pond. If there was one thing he was determined about, it was that he would never get caught up in one of those silly adventure games. Then he saw Grandalf the meddling old conjuror come walking down the garden path...
Yes, here they are again folks, many people's favourite adventure writers, Fergus McNeil and Judith Child. Bilbo Baggins will never be the same again... well, not with a name like Bimbo Faggins he won't. The Boggit, or Bored Too, is split into three different programs, and as we've come to expect from the Delta 4 mob there's a bonus programme as well, Sceptical II, which I'll leave you to discover for yourself.
In the first location you'll see that familiar chest, the familiar green door, with the not quite so familiar green toilet to the south. Even Boggits have to go sometime, I suppose. The door to the outside world is locked against Grandalf, but doors are no obstacle to a meddling old conjuror. He has a quest for Bimbo, and he also leaves him a gift - a box of exploding chocolates. Don't try looking for the 'Sell by' date, just get out of the way before you're splattered, though you can try dropping them in the chest or even down the toilet if you wish. Should you try getting out of the front door, though, you'll discover it has a combination lock and the aptly named Bimbo has forgotten his combinations.
I eventually found the combinations and made it outside the front door, only to be confronted by the weird wizard again, and his even weirder friends. I was invited to 'Come on down' and answer a question before I could proceed further. There's nothing to it, however, and soon I was heading for the dark trees of the Troleslaws, where three trolls named Andre, Bernard and Matthew set about eating me without further ado, or even any HP sauce. 'Boo-tiful,' they pronounced it, too.
Avoiding them next time round (there's a handy RAM SAVE command), I wandered down some drab mountain paths and found a credit card, a Trusscard no less, though no Truss Savings Bank. I found Smelrond's House and the Wiffy Mountains, but when venturing into a cave I was arrested and thrown into... oh no! No, please! Not... but yes, it's the Goblins' Dungeon, tastefully decorated with the words 'Everyone woz 'ere' on the wall. This is the start of Part Two of the adventure, and you save your data from the end of one part and load it into the next (or you can travel back to an earlier part too). Having discovered nothing but sand in the dungeon, and being unable to summon anyone to help me, I thought I'd be smart and move on to Part Three. No chance! There Bimbo can't do anything and can't move in any direction. Curse you, Delta 4!
The usual humour is packed in, such as the response to GET ALL or the input of four-letter words (and you can safely BREAK WIND in this one, if you choose). There's more than a passing reference to Infocom adventures, that'll be lost on most Spectrum owners, but from what I've seen of the game so far it's got everything we've come to expect from Delta 4 and a few new tricks besides. Don't just Boggit, buy it!
Yes, what would an adventure game be like without an early bug to be found? The first time I got killed by the exploding chocolates, with the accompanying sound effect and message, the Grim Reaper arrived to claim Bimbo and the end had come. Indeed it had, for pressing any key resulted not in the 'Do you want to continue?' message but in the exploding chocolates again, followed by the death message, followed by the exploding chocolates, followed by the death message, followed by... you get the idea. Fortunately the BREAK key took me back to the title screen.
Second only to bugs for the eagle-eyed adventurer come the spelling mistakes. So far I've spotted 'realing' instead of 'reeling' and the occasional 'occaisonal'.
OVERALL SCORE |
80% |
