Akalabeth: World of Doom
Your deadliest foe is hunger!
Richard Garriott's early attempt of an adventure game is basic to say the least. With a fixed number of items to collect and absolutely no direction to be found - you must guide your character to ... explore places and not starve or be killed by wandering creatures who all seem to enjoy teaming up against you. In one instance I had a rat, skeleton and thief fight me all at the same time. It was very strange. While the basic art in the dungeon is ok, there's really nothing worth exploring here and by today's standards I have to give this half a rapier out of 5. It's just not worth playing.
Insight: Buy food or die.
Martian Dreams and Savage Empire
Apparently mars has oxygen and dinos aren't that big.
In the first, you are one of a rescue team sent to retrieve the leaders of the Victorian era from the red planet while in the other you are a time displaced adventurer sent to rescue a bunch of random people. While one is set on the empty, yet somehow breathable surface of Mars and the other in a claustrophobic, dinosaur filled jungle they both suffer the same problems: a huge map purely for traversal, lack of guidance on where to go, and quite simply a poor and unfriendly user interface. I'm sure there is an interesting story hiding in these somewhere, but I simply ran out of patience to find it. Ultimately I give both 1 "find the answer in the manual" out of 5, and for all but the most die hard Ultima fans - these are just not worth playing.
Insight: If you got these from GOG then you have a "secret answers.txt" file in the game directory to help you get past the old school copyright check.
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