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Home  Reviews To Cage A Magpie Review
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Written by David Whyld
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Monday, 20 March 2006 |
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"To Cage A Magpie" by Lucilla Frost
The author's first game, British Fox & The Celebrity Abductions, was
highly spoken of in the AIF community when it came out, yet for some
reason I never seemed to have got round to playing it. But when the
sequel, written in TADS (the original was an ADRIFT game) put in an
appearance, I decided I'd give it a go to see what all the fuss was
about. Would it live up to the hype generated by its predecessor? Or
would it just be another of those games that the AIF people love but
the rest of the world hate?
Thankfully it was the former.
To Cage A Magpie follows the adventures of cockney thief, Angela
Hall, AKA The Magpie, who uses her powers of being able to fly and
turn invisible to rob from the rich and… well, keep it for herself.
(Where did she get these powers from? Don't know. The game doesn't
see fit to enlighten me.) Obviously Anj (as she's known to friends)
hasn't made good use of her talents as she's living in a grimy
council flat when the game begins.
There are a few problems with Magpie but considerably less than I
expected from an AIF game. It's been tested, for god's sake! Actually
tested! Unfortunately the testing missed out a few annoyances like a
crucial item required to progress the game only showing up after
the `stuff' in Magpie's apartment has been searched a certain number
of times (the actual number seems to vary from game to game). As
such, I spent a good fifteen minutes scratching my head in
frustration before I could even leave the apartment. I'd searched
everywhere, done everything I could think of, tried the hints which,
this being an AIF game, were non-existent, and was just on the verge
of quitting when I decided to search again and, lo and behold, I
found something useful! After that, the game progressed quite happily
for a while, although I'd question the necessity to make the player
search something a random number of times. After you search once and
fail to find something useful, why would you keep searching on the
off chance something you need will show up?
The storyline involves stealing a briefcase from the house of one Mr
Smythe, inside which are a number of confidential documents. Getting
into the house is easy enough (there are several different ways to
get inside) but getting the briefcase, and them getting out of the
house again, is a nightmare. Kudos to the writer for coming up with
such a mind bogglingly frustrating series of events, and I suppose
it's to her credit that I kept on struggling with things long after
I'd have given up with most other games. Part of the incentive to
keep on trying is the way every time you fail, you seem to get ever
so slightly closer to what you're trying to achieve and it's easy to
think "ah, but if I did it that way instead…" then you'll get to
where you need to be.
Magpie is unusual for an AIF game for several reasons. First, as
stated above, it's been tested and while this hasn't eliminated every
problem (try searching Mr Smythe or Lady Windsor and you'll see what
I mean), it's certainly gone a long way towards making this one of
the few AIF games released recently that's actually well worth
playing. Second, the game is about the storyline and not solely
focused on the sex. In fact, there's not even that much sex in
Magpie, and even less that directly involves the player. Smythe and
Windsor will have a lengthy sex scene, but this progresses whether
the player is actually present or not. A later sex scene, necessary
to the game's completion, features the player and Windsor herself,
although it's more erotic than the usual explicit hardcore writings
that plague most AIF games. I'm sure even a few of the regular IF
crowd could play this game and not be unduly offended over it.
One of the game's oddities, although it didn't really affect the game
in the long run, was the way the description of Smythe's living room
is repeated for both the stairs and the kitchen, thereby making it
awkward sometimes telling where the player is. A couple of times, I
could have sworn I was actually in the living room but the game
wouldn't let me move upstairs because it seemed to think I was in the
kitchen.
By far the worst thing about the game, and the ceaseless repetition
of which was enough to tempt me to bash out QUIT a time or two, is
the PC's craving for a smoke. Now if this happened once or twice
throughout the game, it'd be acceptable. But every few moves?
Definitely not acceptable. Before I'd even managed to leave my
apartment, I was overcome with the urge for a smoke. I had another
while trying to get into Smythe's house, another once I was inside,
several others whilst searching for the briefcase… Tedious puzzle? Oh
yes. But then it's not even really a puzzle as simply typing SMOKE
fixes the cigarette craving – or at least resets the timer so you
have a whole four or five moves before it begins all over again.
Strangely SMOKE and SMOKE TAB (another name for the cigarettes)
sometimes produce different responses, SMOKE TAB being a stealthy
smoke while SMOKE being a non-stealthy one that various NPCs in the
game will detect if they're close enough. This might have been a nice
enough puzzle if I hadn't been typing SMOKE TAB right from the start
of the game and so was unaware of it for the most part.
If you decide not to bother smoking a cigarette, or you run out, the
game ends after a certain amount of the time with Magpie deciding to
abandon her mission and go off in search of some more smokes. This
she can do even if she happens to be locked in Smythe's house at the
time with no other way out!
Many of the game's puzzles are of the try and die variety: meaning
you try something not knowing whether it's going to succeed or kill
you. Often this is the only way to make progress and while it isn't
much of a hassle to reload the game if it kills you, or simply type
UNDO a few times, it becomes annoying when you're dying every few
moves. As some of the puzzles (getting hold of the key being the
worst offender) are time based and can only happen at a certain time,
it's a fair bet you're going to be reloading and UNDOing a lot. By
the time I finally got hold of the key without Smythe catching me, I
must have died a dozen or more times.
There are many ways to put the game into an unfinishable situation
and some had me almost climbing the walls in frustration. The way the
game's sequences fit together is quite ingenious, often requiring
split second timing on the behalf of the player in order to solve
them. I ended up dying numerous times because I'd left something a
fraction of a second too long and either Smythe or Windsor caught me.
Other times, I died when the ultraviolet sensors came on and I was
detected because I hadn't moved out of the way in time.
While not a perfect game (I'm still having nightmares about the
endless craving for smokes and getting the safe open without being
caught), To Cage A Magpie is certainly a decent one. Compared to the
recent bug-ridden AIF offerings, it's a delight. Beta-tested, well
written, an actual honest to god storyline, multiple ways of solving
many of the game's puzzles… it's the kind of thing the AIF community
is crying out for, but which it gets so very seldom indeed.
Highly recommended.
7 out of 10 |
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