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The
day started well. That Scott Electronics deal you handled had
done brilliantly, according to your boss, David Rogers, and
he'd offered you a partnership in his broking firm, Rogers &
Rogers. That means you get a new office, a new secretary and
a BMW. It's nice in the morning, your first day as a partner,
and David welcomes you and shows you to the new office. Mind
you, it looks a lot like the old office - the same chair and
filing cabinet, the same desk, and still no phone. A yuppie
without a phone? That's like a fish without chips.
Noting
your lack of enthusiasm, David tells you the firm will be moving
to new offices soon anyway and asks you to take a list of early
bookings to the dealing room at the end of the corridor. If
you follow him out through your secretary's office, though,
you hear him tell her that he'll see her later, and he says
that he'll need her signature on a cheque. A secretary co-signing
a cheque? Strange, you might think, but that's not the only
strange thing you're going to find as you wander round the offices
this morning.
Down
in David's secretary's office there's a perfumed letter on top
of the shredding machine, although his secretary won't allow
you near it. 'It's really easy to lose a finger in them tings'
she tells you. But nature takes its course and you get your
hands on the letter and read it? 'Dear Ticklepot, Just a short
note as Derek will be home soon. I can't wait to see you again.
Last time was fantastic. Ring me on Monday after Derek gets
there. Love and stuff, Jenny XXX' Now there's something not
quite right about this. What is it? And isn't that handwriting
vaguely familiar? Of course! You're Derek, and Jenny's your
wife!! In which case, who the hell is Ticklepot?? The fact that
the letters on the shredding machine right outside the door
to David Rogers' office might be a teensy weensy clue.
Perhaps
there's another due contained on the cassette tape that's in
David's desk... that is, once you've found out how to get through
the locked door, which yet again his secretary is anxious to
prevent you from doing. Play the tape on the stereo
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in your new BMW and you find out that one side contains a recording
of the meeting you had with David to discuss your promotion,as
far as you remember it, while on the other side is the same
meeting - but definitely not as you remember it! So what's going
on?
The
cassette tape comes as part of the packaging, and Corruption
is, as you're no doubt aware, the latest adventure from Magnetic
Scrolls. And a very different kettle of adventurous fish it
is, too. No Kerovnian capers here, but instead a tale of deadly
intrigue set in the fast-paced yuppie world of London's commodity
and currency dealers. Don't bother looking for treasure, you've
already got that if the BMW is anything to go by, but watch
out you don't get stabbed in the back as you get involved in
the corruption that's going on somewhere - and you may even
get blamed for it all! Some kind of white powder could be involved,
but you'll only find that out if you go to the toilet at the
right time!
In
fact being in the right place at the right time is an important
factor in this game, as is asking the various office employees
about each other. I tend not to like this style of adventure,
and I admit that my copy of Corruption was lying around for
a few days before I even loaded it up. But once I had done I
soon got into it and found it enjoyable, and of course done
with the professionalism we've come to expect from Magnetic
Scrolls. By keeping an eye on some of the characters, or by
staying in the same location for a while and seeing what goes
on, you
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can
start to piece together bits of information. Not that you'll
be pleased to hear all of it! The information from the letter
that you find on the shredder will be confirmed for you if you
have lunch with your wife, for example. And there are several
different sticky ends in store too. The FOLLOW command comes
in useful, as you can tag along one step behind a particular
character by continually pressing ENTER, and watch what they
get up to, but you can interrupt this at any time by typing
any other command. You can WAIT UNTIL a specified time to speed
up the action in a particular place, and although you're told
to use the AGAIN command to repeat your last input it's much
easier to press the EDIT key once as that also repeats the input.
Just press ENTER instead of editing it, that's all. The 'B'
side of the disk comes in handy for saved games, of which you'll
need plenty, and a useful tip is not only to mark the place
where you saved but the time of day, too.
The
parsers a bit tedious in places.
PUT
BAG IN BRIEFCASE. "But the briefcase is closed," that
kind of thing. And when you're carrying the right key to unlock
a door, UNLOCK DOOR is greeted by "What with?" It
also takes you ages to unlock the door of your own car, as you
fiddle around getting the key out of your pocket, and of course
once the doors unlocked it's still got to be opened, and then
when you open it and type IN the parser tells you there's nothing
here to go inside, and you have to type ENTER CAR. All this
does rather slow down what's described as "a fast-paced
thriller".
There's
the typical Rainbird glossy packaging, with extra bits and pieces
in the box, including some amusing inserts for your own personal
organiser. All in all, I enjoyed Corruption far more than I
thought I would... but not quite as much as the previous Magnetic
Scrolls games. Maybe I'm just more of a wrinklie than a yuppie
when it comes to adventure games.
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