If you're looking for the review of Discworld Noir (i.e. from following a link), click here. This review is of the first Discworld game.

If that's what you want, please read on...

There are some old adventure games out there that are still worth playing that maybe aren’t quite as well known as the Monkey Island series. I’ve decided to try to review as many of them as humanly possible (well at least it keeps me off the streets). Reviewing older games can of course be a bit tricky as far as objectivity goes, but I’ll do my best.

Overview

The first on my list is the original Discworld game. You play as the incompetent wizard Rincewind, on a mission to save the city from a dragon… which turns into a mission to save the dragon from… you’ll find out.

First Impressions

Starting out in Unseen University, Rincewind must visit the Arch-Chancellor to receive a mission. Then he has to complete the mission… by doing, of course, implausible and unlikely things. Well it is a game - and it is Discworld, so what do you expect? All the old favourite characters are there and the humour bombards you straight away. It all looks great fun, but quickly starts to give the impression that the difficulty level has been pitched a bit too high for it to continue being great fun.

Interface

The usual point-and-click interface is used in Discworld and for conversation handling you can either choose a question, exclamation, joke, or insult. Occasionally one or two conversation topics will show up as well. This works okay but I didn’t really feel in charge of the conversations. Right clicking on an object will make Rincewind look at it, left-click and you will walk to it, while using the item is achieved by double-clicking it. Inventory handling is also fully mouse-driven and you have your old friend the Luggage to hold your stuff.

(Oh yeah – some puzzles require that Rincewind have a particular item in his own extremely limited inventory – very annoying at times.)

Difficulty

I found a lot of the puzzles in Discworld to be more frustrating than challenging. It’ll take you quite a while to beat this game, but the balance between enjoyment and pulling your hair out isn’t quite right!

Aesthetics

Don’t expect too much from the graphics on a game os old as them there hills. It looks very dated, but it’s also very colourful, has decent animation (a little jerky at times but due to the complexity of some of the animations that’s forgivable - absolutely everything Rincewind does is animated, there’s no cop-outs at all in that area), and nice backgrounds. Okay so it’s not up to modern standards, but that doesn’t really detract from the game. The animations are also very funny at times - for the right reason, I mean! It all looks very cartoony, which fits in with the style perfectly.

I can’t really comment much on the sound. Using VDMSound (available for free at http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~vromas/vdmsound/) I could get the music to work (not bad actually), but whatever settings I tried it was impossible to get the sound effects and speech working. This is unfortunately a problem with nearly all older games (including all of the older adventure games I’m planning to review) that run in the “DOSbox” mode.

Will You Still Be Playing it in 6 Months’ Time?

Probably not. If you can’t solve the puzzles you will, I suspect, either get hold of a walthrough or just give up.

Is it Worth the Money?

Depends how much you pay for it…

If you’re a fan of either Discworld or graphical adventure games (or, like me, both), you’ll enjoy playing this first attempt to make a game out of Terry Pratchett’s fantasy world. It’s not brilliant, and in some ways it hasn’t dated too well, but there are still a lot of laughs to be had and some good old-fashioned problem-solving fun. I enjoyed it, but it’s certainly not one of the best adventure games I’ve ever played.


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Final Ratings

Graphics: - 68% - dated but colourful with the added bonus of some funny animation.

Sound: - N/A – I can’t really comment on this as I couldn’t get the speech or sound FX to work.

Playability: - 74% - easy to play but fiddly handling sometimes.

Longevity: - 71% - you’ll get bored or us a walkthrough, either way it won’t last you forever but is of a pretty decent length nonetheless.

Replay Value: - 66% - for the jokes you might be tempted to play it again…

Value For Money: - 75% - if you can get it at all it’ll be very cheap, so pretty good VFM.

Overall Rating: - 68% - worth getting your hands on if you see it cheap.



Links

The Monkey Island Archives (MI1-3)
Escape from Monkey Island (MI4)
Bladerunner
Discworld: Noir
Grim Fandango
Law & Order 2: Double or Nothing
Broken Sword: Sahdow of the Templars
Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror

Recommended: Yes

Version Played: Released
Operating System: Windows
CPU: Other
CPU Speed (MHz): over 600
RAM (MB): More than 256
Best Played With/Intended For: Single Player
Graphics Card Family: Other