Bridge and The Watchmaker

[lathany]

frax and cardinalsin came over on Saturday to play Bridge and Articulate.

After a number of hands, frax and cardinalsin started to build up their own system. On bateleur's suggestion they put it together from scratch trying to work out how many points, honours and what distribution they would want each other to hold when bidding openings and responses. I think they've drafted a Weak No Trump system which held up well against a number of practise hands.

After dinner the twins (who had been attention seeking and generally misbehaving) and the bridge were put to one side and Articulate came out. The teams were cardinalsin and bateleur versus frax and myself. They hated the 'People' category (despite getting a reasonable score), we hated 'Geography' (we're not talking about our geography question score). However, after both reaching the finish we won on a geography question (Victoria Falls). This was probably because I described it a word at a time rather than attempting to describe the whole.

They then hurried off to catch a late train, but frax may swap cardinalsin for ealuscerwen and return some time this coming weekend.



Then on Sunday I did a bit of Diablo, a bit of writing and bateleur and I finished The Watchmaker.

The Watchmaker is a point and click adventure game. It involves playing two characters rather than one and your heroes (Darrel Boone - Scientific Investigator and Victoria Conroy - Lawyer) are sent to an Austria castle (modern day) to find a device in the shape of a pendulum before midnight (or it will destroy the world).

The game has some nice ideas in it. Using two characters with different roles is a good choice, although there is rarely a situation where you want to use one rather than the other. The characters in the game (including the two heroes and the seven castle inhabitants) tend to stay in character and, when you talk to people, you generally receive useful information from expected quarters.

The puzzles are somewhat less arbitrary than for most adventure games although, it must be said, that the game still suffers from this fault. There is quite a range of puzzle types so that regular saves (keep them - you sometimes need to replay cut scenes for clues) plus a pen and paper are almost essential. And just when you think that the game has no timing critical bits, the pace starts to increase and you meet them.

A much bigger problem is the whole 'hotspot' issue. Some objects have tiny hotspots (in one particular instance, it took bateleur several minutes to find a viewpoint on which he could click on an object that he knew was there) whilst others are so huge than they completely upset every attempt to walk anywhere (all the trees in the grounds, for instance).

The plot has some great ideas in it (it is initially fascinating to watch it unfold) but, sadly, does not hang together. It is as though there were two separate script writers. One who knew what they were doing and one who suddenly took over and was told to tie the lose ends together in twenty four hours. Also many promising minor threads are never followed through.

But bateleur and I really enjoyed it; partly because we rarely play games together (strangely, he objected to playing any of the Final Fantasy series more than once) and partly because of the smug feelings we had from finishing it all without once referring to a faq.

I would recommend The Watchmaker to anyone who enjoys point and click games (eg. Syberia). But it's enjoyable, rather than being unmissable in the genre.



Now, onto my Monday. Ironing, babying and hopefully a 'Blue Cow' story during the Storytellers on CBeebies. Having watched the Blue-Cow-isn't-Rapunzel episode, I want to see more.