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From: tullman_r@A1.HANV02.SANDOZ.COM ("Robert H. Tullman")
Subject: Decision making/Simulation
Message-ID: <30116170104991.155658@HANV02>
Sender: CD-ROM <CDROM-L@uccvma.ucop.edu>
Reply-To: tullman_r@A1.HANV02.SANDOZ.COM
Organization: FUNET-NGW
Distribution: alt
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 1994 20:05:01 GMT
Lines: 34

   rryan@panix.com (Rob Ryan) said:

  >I just played Critical Path and was pretty impressed.  The concept of an
  >interactive film is really impressive.  Unfortunately, the game itself is
  >a little easy (there are only 2 dozen or so "decisions" or alternate game
  >paths) and I played the whole thing in just over an hour.  (A little
  >expensive for an hour of gaming.)

  Thanks for the review, I was thinking about this one...but it seems too easy
  from what you say..


  >Incidentally, I assume that the game was so short because of a lack of
  >space on the CD (I can easily assume that the QuickTime movies can take
  >up a lot of space).  To play out the entire game (if you make all the
  >right decisions) takes less than 25 minutes.  Is this the case, or are
  >there movie/games with more video?

  I think maybe this points out the evolutionary process in the CD-ROM game
  genre. Without MASSIVE computing power,(i.e. the power to GENERATE video
  sequences) once you are locked into stock video footage, a game of this type
  will never have the continued playability of the 'SIMULATION' type games
  (e.g. Falcon 3.0, SIMCity, HARPOON etc..) where randomly generated scenes
  react to the player to generate different outcomes each time. Granted, the
  latter type are not as pretty (yet) but have more staying power. In time
  perhaps the two genres will converge...I realize that this limitation has not
  limited the popularity and playability of the ADVENTURE (Kings Quest etc.)
  genre, but as pointed out above, the limits on space devoted to glitzy sound
  and video (may) tend to limit the current crop of CD-ROM Adventures compared
  to their disk counterparts...

  Just my very tarnished $0.02

   Bob