Before we begin though, a short history lesson. Simon 3D had been in development at Adventure Soft for at least 2 years; 4 if you include the amount of time it took to find a publisher. Ugly rumors surfaced in the adventure underground that the game was unplayable and poorly programmed (and as you know, we usually don't report rumors, we just start 'em!). Just Adventure was unable to substantiate these reports as unfortunately, our repeated attempts to obtain a playable version never received a response. The game itself is a sequel to the moderately successful Simon the Sorcerer 2, which could never find a North American publisher (are we sensing a trend here?).

For those new to the adventure community or who are unfamiliar with certain computer terms, let's explain a bug. A bug is caused by poor programming and will cause a game to either quit working (freeze) at certain points or kick the player entirely out of the game, usually before they have had a chance to save their progress. Poor programming can often cause other problems also such as characters becoming stuck in walls, inventory items not appearing when needed and so on. There was a time, long ago in the enchanted, innocent past of adventure gaming when bugs were non-existent. This no longer holds true as this year alone patches have been released for Jazz & Faust, Watchmaker and now Simon 3D; the Queen Bee in this hive of buggy games.

The game proper concerns Simon's efforts to reclaim his body from the evil wizard Sordid. Simon is a 12-year old boy who has magically been turned into a young sorcerer and now has wonderful adventures in a fairy tale land stocked with Mother Goose-like characters. This would all seem to be a rollicking good time, except Simon's adult writers have attempted to make Simon sound and behave like what they believe a 12-year old sounds like: potty-mouthed, self-serving, sarcastic and chock-full of double entendres, leering and sexual innuendo. Yet, I've played two erotica adventure games (Kama Sutra, Exotica Island) that I didn't find as insulting as Simon 3D simply because the erotica games respected their core audience. A reading of the Simon 3D instruction booklet gives the distinct impression that the game is also aimed towards the younger gamer. If this is the case, why then was I embarrassed to play Simon 3D with my own 12-year old son?

Being as this is Simon's third adventure, one would hope that he would have matured some by now, but alas, the humor is as trite and stale as ever. The writers engage in British T & A, fart and tee-hee humor that will appeal to a South Park mentality. An encounter with an entomologist invokes the following response to Simon's question regarding the difficulty of capturing butterflies, "…it's HARD, but if you POKE around in enough DARK BUSHES…," and to reinforce the point, Simon leers smugly into the monitor screen. Tee hee, get it? They're talking about a male erection. And lest you think I'm exaggerating, I was playing with the subtitles on since, because of the game's bugginess, characters would sometimes speak and not be heard. And as the writers consider us totally stupid, any word that could be considered a sexual innuendo is not only capitalized, but also bolded in the subtitles. My son had been playing alongside me up to this point but I asked him to leave the room. Not that I believe for a moment that he has never heard any of these terms, but kids his age are subjected to enough of this crap on television and in the movies without being subjected to it in an adventure game.

To be honest, if this were Beavis & Butthead, I would probably be rolling on the floor with laughter. But Beavis & Butthead are meant to represent everything that is wrong with society today; they are antiheroes. Beavis & Butthead are also teenagers geared towards an audience of young adults, they are not, like Simon, a 12-year old attempting to humor a similar audience. So is any of this actually witty? Well, if dated references are your cup of tea, there are numerous references to Star Wars and Tomb Raider (can't ever get enough of those Jar-Jar jokes). During load sequences, Simon is pictured sitting solitaire on a park bench a la' Forrest Gump. If you find incest to be a hoot, there are numerous jokes about ma and pa and moron offspring (and more leering by Simon). One particular metaphysical conversation with a character named Judas in the Pool of Punishment is actually witty because the humor relies on Simon's misunderstanding and naivety of the situation, unlike other scenarios in which he is just a wiseacre. The smart-ass kid angle gets stale after a point, especially when it is so heavy-handed.

The previous Simon games were in 2D, but due to pressure from gamers who don't play adventure games yet have deluded developers into believing that improved graphics will translate into improved sales, Simon has gone the 3D route. If dated and blocky 3D graphics are your preference, then you will be in nirvana. If this game had been released two years ago, the graphics would still look dated and blocky. Bushes are square, trees are polygonal. There are vast open areas of space that are not utilized other than to have Simon run to-and-fro endlessly. Two nice touches are phone booths that allow you - when they work - to transport between areas and restore points placed in areas were death might be imminent. This provides the gamer with the opportunity to save a game before or after being killed, an oversight that adventure gamers have been complaining about for years

True adventure gamers are aware that character development and puzzles take precedence over graphics, but allow me to make the following point. Simon, in order to make some money, must catch butterflies in a net. The animation of Simon swinging the net is very STIFF and RIGID. Tee hee. Leer into screen with stupid sneer on face. Not very funny was it? Simon's movement throughout this 3D world is controlled via the keyboard and while the controls are responsive, they are also over-responsive. There is not a square tree or bush that I did not thunk into at least ten times. The music and voice-overs are both wonderful, though Simon's character does sound much older than his years.

Give the people at AdventureSoft their due, when it comes to puzzles, they are among the best. Tried-and-true stalwarts like combine the inventory items fit nicely alongside puzzles that require the player to think "outside the box." Unfortunately a 3D world demands puzzles that take advantage of the graphics and these 3D puzzles don't always work. Take for example the butterfly puzzle. You must equip a butterfly net and then swing it towards a butterfly. That's not the problem. The problem is getting a butterfly, specifically a Purple Emperor worth 250 gold pieces, to appear. I understand that butterflies are an endangered species in some parts of the world, but it took over twenty minutes for this particular butterfly to appear. You can literally run around the screen for up to three minutes before a butterfly even materializes and then it is probably the wrong one. To make matters worse, it seems as though only one butterfly can appear onscreen at a time, so you have no option but to capture and then release the unwanted butterfly in order to trigger another's appearance. Or you can you run back and forth to the entomologist to sell your catches for smaller increments of ten and twenty gold pieces at a time. This was easily the most boring and pointless puzzle I've ever encountered in an adventure game.

Even all of the above criticisms could be minimized if it weren't for the bugs, the damnable bugs. Simon 3D is divided into six chapters. I made it almost to the end of chapter 2 (a very long chapter) which in theory would be about 33% of the game (and believe me, those reviews of Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind that appeared two days after the games were released - those reviewers didn't even play 33% of those products). In the course of two chapters, the following occurred:

• The game kicked to desktop 6 times.
• Twice I used a phone booth for transportation only to be unable to exit the booth when I reached the desired destination.
• Twice characters voices disappeared, thus the need for the subtitles.
• Twice inventory items needed to solve a puzzle could not be activated. I had to exit the game and then restart.
• Chapter One just strangely finished of its own accord without any warning.

The worse is yet to come, for a puzzle that involved giving magic beans to an incestuous moron crashed six times. A search on the internet found the required patch which was then downloaded and installed. After installing the patch, a readme file appeared along with a warning that the patch might destroy any saves. Why would I expect a company that takes four years to develop and release a game that is still rampant with bugs to release a patch that doesn't erase the player's saves? Of course none of my saves now work.

Did I give this game a fair shake? I put in over ten hours of playing time. I restarted numerous times. I downloaded and installed a patch. I researched various walkthroughs on the Internet and discovered that not only were others having the same problems, but even after installing the patch there are still tons of bugs in the game that render it unplayable unless you take certain precautions such as turning off any programs that might be running in the background of your computer. Just Adventure has been following and looking forward to this game for four years, but there comes a point when you throw your hands up in disgust and we're not going to give it a good grade just because it's a much needed adventure game.

Where did Simon 3D first go wrong? Personally, I think the developers tried to please too many gamers from outside the adventure community. You simply cannot make a good adventure game that combines adventure-type puzzles, with arcade and action sequences. Sure you can try, but most times what you end up with is a hodgepodge of a mess like Simon 3D. Adventure developers are going to have to face the fact that there is simply a smaller audience for adventure game than there is for action games and trying to appeal to the action gamers is futile, because then you please no one for those who crave action won't buy the game because of the puzzles and those who crave puzzles won't buy the game because of the action. Nor do we demand fancy 3D graphics. All we ask is a solid storyline with character development. Even that would be enough to encourage me to finish a game starring a pint-sized smart-ass with no redeeming qualities.

Final Grade Simon 3D: F.

If you liked Simon 3D, then:

Read: any of the Harry Potter novels
Play: Simon I & 2
Watch: Pinocchio the X-rated version (the ads for this movie declared, "It's not his nose that grows")

System Requirements:

Windows 95/98
Pentium 233
64 Mb RAM
430 Mb HD Space
8x CD-Rom Drive
8Mb Direct3D Compatible Video Card
Soundblaster Compatible Video Card
DirectX 7.0