Scott Adam's Questprobe #1: The Hulk was, if you recall, astoundingly bad in my opinion, mired in long outdated design sensibilities and using the Marvel license poorly. Given that the third Questprobe (Human Torch & The Thing) was evidently played by few despite being on every major computer platform, and that studio Adventure International tanked before the series could be finished, I don't have high hopes that Questprobe #2: Spider-Man did much to redeem the series.
A bundled comic book continues the plot that The Hulk started. The pacifistic Kanamites contemplate their inevitable extinction as an unstoppable Black Fleet continues its path of annihilation towards their space, and the one member of their high council "Durgan the Philosopher" who urged them to resist had been expelled for heresy.
Durgan's young disciple, Tuskar, under little scrutiny from the council, observes some strange quantum-like interference on the planetary computer, and from tracing back the signals to their source - two pulsating gems kept in a museum's archives, makes two startling realizations - that these gems are the objects that the Black Fleet so ruthlessly seek, but furthermore that the gems themselves are sentient, and desire total destruction of all organic life! The Black Fleet, it seems, is in their devastation preventing some doomsday scenario, having already located and secured several of these gems throughout the universe, though they themselves may not be aware of it.
Meanwhile, Mysterio escapes from prison and infiltrates the Daily Bugle seeking revenge on Spider-Man. They fight for several pages, and then the Chief Examiner shows up, beckoning a very confused Spider-Man to jump through his portal as Hulk had done before. He reluctantly does, emerges in a split-second, and then defeats Mysterio, shattering his illusions (and helmet), but can't help wonder what Chief Examiner wants of him.
Apple II is once again presumed to be the lead platform, although the Commodore 64 version came out earlier. Now running on an upgraded SAGA+ engine, Spider-Man boasts a multi-word sentence parser! After all, two-word sentences may be good enough for Hulk, but not for a quippier superhero like Spider-Man.
The entire game is, of course, a test by the Chief Examiner occurring during the split-second span of being in his portal before emerging, and we begin in a hallway. A sign reads:
"To prove yourself worthy of these powers you must show you can supply the brainpower! You must collect all the *Gems & store them properly away! Good Luck!"
I Trizborted out the office complex, which consisted of five abandoned office rooms and an elevator hallway.
One office has a pile of sand and a baby's crib. When you enter, the sand cries "ouch!" and turns into Sandman, who stops you from doing anything.
No problem. I just climbed on the ceiling to avoid disturbing him, allowing me to grab some formula -and our first gem - from the crib.
In the office to the northwest, a bio gem and energy egg sit on pedestals, and just like in The Hulk, tarrying here causes the egg to explode, destroying you and the bio gem. And this time you can't eat the egg. So I avoid this room for now. In two other offices I find Hydroman and Lizard, who boast that I'll never get their gem, but can't find any way to meaningfully interact with them - my web fluid is empty, and my strength is useless.
Madame Webb sits in the last office, all the way up north.
Webb can scan the thoughts of your foes, so I had her scan everyone mentioned in the manual. Only a few returned any results:
- Sandman: "You're above him."
- Mysterio: "It maps odd!"
- Lizard: "CaCO3 + HCl → CaCl2 + ..."
- Hydroman: "Solid!"
The first clue hints at the solution to a problem I already solved. Mysterio's means nothing to me yet, and Hydroman's clue I think means I need to find a way to freeze him.
Lizard's clue is an incomplete chemical equation that roughly means "Calcium carbonate reacts with hydrogen chloride to create calcium chloride." Missing from this equation are are the byproducts carbon dioxide and water. I don't know where you get either of these chemicals, nor how this helps you defeat lizard, but as a New England homeowner who just endured multiple early-March snowstorms, I'm well acquainted with the practical uses of calcium chloride.
Done on this floor for now, the elevator's call button seems to be unoperative, but this troubles us little.
Climbing up the shaft one level, Mysterio runs past.
The game says I can go up or down, but when I try it just goes "BUMP! Something stops me!" and can't be bothered to tell me what, so I go back into the elevator shaft and ascend one more level, which is all I can before it goes BUMP again.
The top floor is another hallway with three connected rooms. The southmost is an abandoned office, completely bare except for hydrochloric acid, calcium carbonate, and "exotic powders." The northmost is a chemistry lab where I can mix the chemicals to get my calcium chloride.
The westmost room is a computer lab where Ringmaster helpfully tells me I can defeat him by turning the computer's knob, but forces me to leave before I can do that.
Back on the first floor, the calcium chloride "dries out" Lizard, letting me take another gem from his body.
After that, I discovered through guessing that Webb's lair is the place to deposit the gems. The two I found so far were worth 11/100 points, suggesting 17 to 19 in total.
I had to turn to a walkthrough to see what to do next, and I feel dumb about this one. The BUMP in the elevator shaft is the elevator, as opposed to the mysterious invisible thing that goes BUMP when you try to climb up or down the skyscraper exterior. Push the elevator and you can go up another level into the penthouse.
I set the thermostat to 31. I open the desk and find a third gem. The painting - a portrait of J. Jonah Jameson can be taken, and the clock, which can also be taken, shows how many "moves" have elapsed. The couch and desk can be taken too, and being the kleptomaniac that these games have trained me to be, I do!
Back down on the first floor, Hydroman and his aquarium are frozen solid. The ice block, which has a gem frozen inside, can be taken, and so can Hydroman.
I go back up the shaft and raise the thermostat, and after some struggling with the parser, find it responds to "get gem from water," only Hydro-Man, who is now in my inventory, won't allow it. So I go back into the shaft and put him down (Spider-Man gently sets him down so he doesn't fall). Delivering the gems to Webb raises my score to 22, and confirms to me there are 18 gems - 14 more to go.
A walkthrough reveals that four more gems are found by searching the niches in the shaft - niches that aren't shown in the picture nor is there existence revealed by the "look" command. Gaaaah - we're going from easy adventure puzzle territory bullshit adventure puzzle territory at warp speed now, folks.
Ripping up the painting reveals a piece of paper with a web fluid formula, and back in the chemistry lab, I can make some web fluid with "partial success only," consuming my exotic powders.
Ringmaster is in the computer lab nearby, guarding the means to his defeat. I tried putting stuff in my ears so he couldn't command me out with The Voice, to no avail. So I tried something silly - closing my eyes, which had been a puzzle solution in The Hulk. And, well, if it hadn't worked, I wouldn't be mentioning that I tried.
Opening my eyes revealed another gem, and Ringmaster gone. Nine gems found, nine to go.
The walkthrough tells me that the computer can be operated here with the command "type run." There is no obvious indication that this particular command should do anything, or indeed that there is even a keyboard in the room to operate, but doing so causes the computer to output:
"need 950 pounds of paper to start presses!"
Ah, this is a simulation of the Daily Bugle's office! I don't know what this accomplished, though.
The walkthrough didn't really help at this point - it said to "CLIMB ROOF" at the side of the skyscraper, but this didn't do anything - Spidey still just bumped into something. And then I realized what was going on, and typed "CLIMB CEILING" instead.
I'll admit this is a bit clever, but it's also a bit stupid. Why shouldn't going up break Mysterio's illusion just as well as climbing on the ceiling does?
The mesh here is ripped off, and a gem within is collected. The duct fan is slowed down and eventually stopped with my weak web fluid, a second gem within the fan assembly is collected, and lo:
A MOTLP! How long it's been since I've seen one!
With all these inventory items I've been hoarding, this one's not too bad to breadcrumb and map out, even though every room looks identical and has six exits, but it's lazily designed, with one true path to the end, and any deviation from it takes you one way to a prior room. And that one true path, it turns out, is just to go straight down five times to reach the basement.
Electro and Doc Ock guard the printing press. I couldn't see much to do here - Electro kills you every turn if you don't duck, but the paper room to the west is safe.
There's a paper weight scale here, but after dropping all of my stuff on it, it only reads 146 pounds, far short of the 950 needed to operate the press. I go back to the thermostat to refreeze Hydroman, collect him, the sleeping Doc Conners, and all of my gems, drop them all on the scale, but it still only reads 516.
What I need to do is GET DOC OCK, and then HIT ELECTRO. Electro throws a bolt, hitting Ock, and stunning both of them - I find a gem on each. Their bodies tip the scale to 951 pounds, just enough to trick the computer into printing a single copy of the Bugle!
"TYPE NEW" at the computer room makes the Chief Examiner appear and hand over another gem. Three to go!
The walkthrough shows me how to get two more - in Mysterio's illusory room, feeling north and south reveals two hidden offices, with a gem in each.
The very last gem is the bio gem, which I find I can retrieve safely by shooting web at it from the hallway. And we're done!
GAB rating: Bad. Spider-Man is somewhat better than The Hulk, but not much. At it's very best, it's a dry, mechanical-feeling adventure that happens to use Spiderman powers for a handful of its puzzles. But at the end of the day, this is just another dull and terse plotless treasure hunt with puzzles that stumble over the line between too trivial and too obtuse in both directions, and uncharacteristically for a Scott Adams game, is padded out with copy+pasted rooms and that ur-cliche of text adventures, a maze of twisty little passages.
The series continues, and prematurely concludes, with Questprobe #3: Human Torch & The Thing, but I don't plan on covering it. It falls short of whale status, and given that it wasn't meant to be the final game, provides no closure, so I am okay with closing the SAGA here, if you'll pardon the pun. Adventureland was fine for its time, but the engine hadn't aged well, and neither graphics nor a slightly improved parser kept it relevant.
My Trizbort map:
I've heard the third one is actually relatively decent (it has mechanics involving swapping between the characters) but you've honestly got better places to spend your time. I'll reach it eventually?
ReplyDelete