Judgment Rites – I hope you like to click on computers a lot.

 by Will Moczarski

Last time I promised to take a look at the manual with you and walk you through it before starting my first mission in Judgment Rites. However, the manual is quite long (36 pages) and takes a no-nonsense approach to explaining the game, meaning it is far more informative and much less entertaining than the manual for, say, Pepper's Adventures in Time.

Two pages stand out, though. Firstly, there is a cute little text from the team about what it means to be a Trekkie and that it has been a great privilege to work on a Star Trek game (shown above). And then there is this beautiful black & white picture of the team: 

What looks like a "T" located near the middle of the team is actually an "I".

There's also some information about the factions that are likely to bother you at some point in the game (Elasi, Romulans, Klingons). And of course it contains an in-depth explanation of the interface which is truly necessary if you've never before played one of Interplay's Star Trek adventure games. It's very similar to the one used in 25th Anniversary as there are two main areas that work a bit differently. You start out on the bridge which is where you can be pulled into bothersome space fights or consult Mr. Spock's computer using a keyword system not unlike, say, conversations in some of the earlier Ultima games, meaning if you get it wrong even just a little bit the fancy 23rd century computer won't know what the hell you're asking it about. If you navigate to the correct section of the star map (more on that below) you will advance the main plot – if you go just about anywhere else, it's more space fights for you. 

The Clue! - Now We’re Playing With Power

Written by MenhirMike

Last time, I ended up liberating the bones of Karl Marx, but unfortunately the police liberated my car from me. So I started this session with a trip to Cars & Vans, Wellington Road to buy a new one. You can go to the parking lot and look at available cars, which includes the cheap Fiat Topolio in various model years. But since that was only a 2-seater, I turned to the 4 seater options instead, of which four fit my budget of 1797 pounds.

• Morris Minor 1948 (29 PS, 100 km/h maximum speed, 66% condition, 40% capacity, 17% conspicuousness) for 1260 pounds

• Morris Minor 1950 (29 PS, 100 km/h maximum speed, 78% condition, 40% capacity, 23% conspicuousness) for 1490 pounds

• Morris Minor 1953 (29 PS, 100 km/h maximum speed, 94% condition, 40% capacity, 28% conspicuousness) for 1780 pounds

• Jeep 1940 (54 PS, 100 km/h maximum speed, 27% condition, 42% capacity, 76% conspicuousness) for 1010 pounds

The 1945 CJ (“Civilian Jeep”) was the first mass-produced civilian four-wheel drive car

King’s Quest VII - Tales from the Crypt

Written by Michael

We will be avoiding this creature today.

Good morning!  The sun is rising on my country cottage as I prepare to enter the midnight black woods of Ooga Booga.  This is truly the Halloween chapter of this game, but sadly, I wasn’t able to time my gameplay to the real-world calendar.

When we last left Rosella, she was hopping in the bucket elevator from the troll kingdom, repaired by a magical rope.  Here, we get nearly to the top...

Game 146: Star Trek: Judgment Rites – Introduction

by Will Moczarski 

Source 

It's time to boldly go where only Joe has gone before...for this blog, at least. Riding on the success of Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, Interplay decided to do a quick follow-up using the same engine. Star Trek: Judgment Rites was released just in time for the holiday season in November 1993 and is generally considered to be the better game. Taking into account that 25th Anniversary scored a respectable 45 points although it was impossible to skip the bothersome action sequences (Joe was ultimately and understandably unable to beat the game fair and square) I'm mildly optimistic that we will have fun with this one. 

The game was designed by a band of six among which the name of Michael A. Stackpole (yes, it's the author!) is probably the most famous. However, some of the others can pull their weight, too. Elizabeth "Liz" Danforth's career in game development began in the mid-1970's, and she apparently has been part of the industry to this day. The latest famous game she worked on is Wasteland 2 (2013) although it may just be me who's unfamiliar with the others. Scott Bennie contributed to 25th Anniversary as well as Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (1997), Star Trek: Starfleet Command (1999) and Starfleet Command II: Empires at War (2000). He was also involved with The Lost Vikings (1993), Descent (1995), and Fallout (1997) to name but a few. A varied and storied career if I ever saw one.

The Clue! - Das Kapital

Written by MenhirMike

Before I start, I wanted to thank a commenter on an earlier gameplay post who clarified that “jemmy” was indeed a proper term for a crowbar used by burglars in British English. So I’ll take back my criticism on that. I still think there are some translation issues, but apart from “prey”, nothing really stood out as terrible. And definitely nothing that broke the game or made it hard to play. With that out of the way, back to our regularly scheduled content.

We robbed the Aunt Emma Store and went back to our hotel room, about to celebrate with some great Bill Haley music on the radio. Instead, there’s a special news broadcast going on: Burglars have tried to steal the crown jewels from the Tower of London! And they almost succeeded, if not for their conspicuous car: A silver car with a blue fish painted on it. The police arrested one of the burglars when they entered the Fat Man’s Pub and are hopeful to arrest the other burglars soon.

Needless to say, Matt is shocked when he remembers Briggs saying that the codename will be Blue Fish. Is Briggs going to rat us out? Matt decides to do the only thing that makes sense here: Continue as usual. Nothing else to do, and if Gludo wants to arrest us, we can cross that bridge when we get there. 

Coincidentally, I once knew an ornamental droid that had similar misfortune with the password “FISH”.