C&VG


Robin Of Sherlock
By Silver Soft
Spectrum 48K/128K

 
Published in Computer & Video Games #54

Robin Of Sherlock

The plot of the latest game from those oddballs who brought you Bored Of The Rings features a collection of literary and fantasy figures you all know and love. There's Robin Of Sherwood, Sherlock, The Wizard Of Oz - plus lots of bizarre items linked to the Smurfs and British Telecom. The object initially appears to be to find Dorothy's dog, Toto, from the Oz story and return him to his owner.

After a short time though, you find yourself investigating a decidedly shady operation involving the nearby monastery and the Godfather Smurf!

The Smurfs are facing a fate almost as awful as being turned into take-aways - like the sorrowful local squirrels! As for the exploding Friar, he's a complete mystery!

Graphics and text are presented on screen at the same time, but something which I found strange is that there is no picture for the first location, or indeed, quite a few locations in the initial stages. While it is certainly acceptable for some locations to be pictureless, there should be something more exciting to grab the player's interest at the outset.

The narrative is all in the past tense; "Robin was standing on..." and "This was done" (after GET, DROP, etc).

It's a little off-putting at first, though after a while it seems a much more logical way to do things, instead of giving the impression of freezing time after every move. "Robin noticed a lighter" is more natural than "You see a lighter".

Descriptions are quite well written, though at times the "jokes" seem to be thrust down your throat in rapid succession.

Apart from this, Robin Of Sherlock is a very entertaining set of programs, with reasonable graphics and good descriptions.