Pathway to Destruction Reviews
Author: Richard Otter
Date: 2005
ADRIFT 4.0



Click here to see the reviews to the Z-Code version.

Reviewed by Timothy Bard

This game starts out with the frequently used 'You don't know where you are, you don't remember what happened' beginning.  Having being part of the Finish the Game Competition, the first few rooms and objects were familiar.

These two factors made me wonder if there would be anything special about this game.  I will admit that, being part of the Finish the Game Competition, I was being a little unfair with the game to begin with.

However, after I explored some more and discovered what the author added to the game beyond the rooms and objects required to meet the competition rules, I found myself very interested in the game.

The game was set in the future with a sci-fi story and me, being a sci-fi fan, found the game very interesting.  I wouldn't say that there was anything particularly unique on the programming side of the game, but I thought the story was good and it was very satisfying to finish the game.

There were a few points where I had trouble guessing what I needed to do with some objects, but when I used the walkthrough, I didn't feel that I was cheating myself.  I had the general idea of what to do, but just couldn't think of the specifics.   I would say the issue was more of "guess what the author was thinking" than "guess the verb".  However, this happened in only two places and I think I may have gotten one of them, if not both, if I spent more time playing the game.  I think one of the problems was that, because this was part of the Finish the Game Competition, I was reading too fast at the beginning.

There are places where spelling and grammar need to be cleaned up, but it is still very readable.

Reviewed by David Whyld (Reviews Exchange 7)

Pathway To Destruction: winner of the Finish The Game Comp I organised, and my personal favourite out of the comp entries.

What's it about?

You're a worker at the Institute of Transportation and about to embark on an experimental mission that should, in theory, teleport you from one side of the planet to the other. Only, of course, something goes wrong and you actually find yourself in a desolate ruin of the world you once knew.

I felt Pathway To Destruction made very good use of the source material, although in a completely different way than I envisioned when I wrote the source. I had had in mind something along the lines of a medieval fantasy adventure with a swords & sorcery element thrown into the mix, but Pathway To Destruction's sci-fi setting seems to fit in remarkably well with the mini-game that was already written, and at no point did I feel that it was out of place. Full marks for that.

A frequent failing of the author's games in the past has been the shallow NPCs and their wildly implausible dialogue, something that Pathway To Destruction is mercifully free of. There aren't any NPCs here, just the main character, and the game is much better for it. (Although saying that, there are bits when the player, despite being alone, speaks out loud which are pretty implausible themselves. Would he really tell himself what to do next after throwing a certain item at another item?)

My only real complaint with the game was the difficulty factor of some of the puzzles; or, if not difficulty factor, then the fact that some of them are so unobvious that it's hard to imagine people ever figuring them out without resorting to the hints. Why would I want to push a lamp post over? Why would I throw a certain item at another item? Why would putting one item on top of another make the second item work? (The second item, incidentally, has a slot in the side which I spent a while trying to put the first item into. It never occurred to me to try putting it on top.) Getting inside the author's mind, or being psychic, is a good requirement for finishing this game. It also didn't help that sometimes seemingly obvious solutions to puzzles didn't work and there wasn't any real explanation for why. I needed to use one item to get the jewel but another item I had, a bar, didn't work. Why?

But overall I thoroughly enjoyed Pathway To Destruction. It wasn't a perfect game, and there were bits that could have done with improving upon, and some of the puzzles could certainly have been better clued, but those issues notwithstanding it was the best game in the comp and definitely the best game the author has written to date.

7 out of 10

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