An evening in front of the telly goes horribly, horribly wrong and PJ Barrett finds himself drawn into the second-worst TV-related experience a guy can go through. After mysteriously bumping into a freaked-out warrior on the sidewalk, his evening at home is cut short when he finds himself sucked through his television set into the alternative reality of Daltere.
I said this was the second-worst TV nightmare. The real worst mare is far too grim to darken the pages of a decent family magazine- let's just say that it involves Esther Rantzen, Lionel Blair, a bath full to the brim with custard, a red triangle in the top corner of the screen and the adjudicating eye of Norris McWyrtre with a stopwatch. Things that make you go, mmm.
OK, so you are in a strange exotic alien-
Time to head North, South, East or West...
PJ Barret - Truly a man amongst aliens But everything is just so painstakingly slow, you will be sick to bleedin' death of bloody Barrett long before coming anywhere close to realising the potential that the story may have to offer. Disk accessing is somewhat sluggish (to say the least) and moving PJ about the playing area takes forever. Compare Altered Destiny to The Secret Of Monkey Island and PJ's deficiencies are forced even further home Whereas Guy Thistlebrush merely needed to be aimed in the right direction, PJ however, has to be painfully inched pixel by pixel around the screen. Monkey Island kept the pace up, Altered Destiny shoots itself in the foot.
And so the game unfolds, in standard RPG fashion. The game-
Michael Berlyn is the (ever-so-slightly-warped) designer responsible for Altered Destiny. Evidently he taught science-fiction writing at Harvard University, so he should really know his stuff. Maybe he does - the game-plot flows quite convincingly and there are lots of nice little touches. For example: talk to Alnar the Metal Shaper by all means, but don't shake his hand - it secretes acid! Possibilities for all the business-executives out there, I'm sure...