Rama is the first computer adventure game that actually made
me an unhappy person. For about ten days.

The game is based on books by
Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee, and I bought the game because I’m such a huge
fan of the books. Psych!

The game starts out promisingly, with your arrival
by shuttle at the huge alien rotating cylinder known as Rama. You get introduced
to the crew (decent acting) and start exploring. So far, so good.

However,
very quickly I began to realize that this game was primarily about math. This
was not a horrible technical problem, because math doesn’t scare me, but it’s
not a very warm and fuzzy basis for a game. Virtually every puzzle deals in some
way with math, mostly in alternative base systems.

And if I thought the
puzzles were chilly, how about the game logic? I know I was supposed to figure
things out from multiple alien viewpoints, but all Rama did was make me
feel sad and stupid. I began resenting the time I was spending stumbling around
and getting lost.

Let’s talk view screen. Rama is yet another game
to commit the cardinal sin of not using the monitor real estate effectively. When
will game designers realize that we’d rather pop up utilities when we need them
than have the playing area reduced to the proverbial postage stamp? I’m hoping
after all the carping about this problem in Dark Side of the Moon that
this particular game problem will be eliminated from new games.

Let’s talk
inventory. Rama has the single worst inventory system I’ve ever seen in
a game. You can only look at a few items at a time, and you can never get rid
of an obsolete item. Therefore, what little time you’re not spending in this game
haplessly translating numbers, or hopelessly lost in the avian and octospider
lairs, will be spent scrolling endlessly up and down through dead items in this
stupid inventory. Whoever responsible for this component of the game should be
hunted down and forced to sit through the musical version of Lost Horizon.

Let’s
talk graphics. Unbelievably, the graphics in Rama don’t even begin to suggest
the scope and grandeur of the ship. Worse, they don’t even competently suggest
its structure or geography.

Let’s talk ending! Rama has an ending
that makes the conclusion of Shivers seem uniquely fulfilling. It’s a tedious
timed decoding sequence followed by an ultra-lame, wrap-absolutely-nothing-up
cinematic, and, finally, a tedious lecture by Dr. Clarke.

I would have
quit this game except I was afraid that would have made me feel even stupider!
I finally resorted to a walkthrough, no, two walkthroughs, which I hate
to do, and sat at my computer absolutely dumbfounded as step after obtuse step
of twisted alien logic was revealed. Over and over I found myself saying, “I
must be stupid because I would have sat here for a year and it wouldn’t have occurred
to me to do that!”

I guess, in the end, Rama does have
one terrific virtue: if addiction to computer games ever becomes a bad social
problem in our country, we’ll be able to use cheaply reproduced copies of Rama
to cure it.

Final Grade: D

If you liked Rama:
Watch: Silent Running
Read: A Rendezvous with Rama
by Arthur C. Clarke
Play: The Arrival

System
Requirements (PC):

486 DX/66
8 MB RAM

2X CD-ROM drive
SVGA graphics
DOS 5.0 or Windows 95
Mouse
Supports
most major sound cards