Here’s a nifty little gumdrop of a game. It was released with virtually
no fanfare–and by Interplay, a major company yet! Strange indeed.

It doesn’t
play like it’s a game from a major publisher. It plays like a perky little
garage game. This is not a complaint. One of my favorite games of the last eighteen
months, Cracking the Conspiracy, was a superb garage game.

Y2K
begins on December 31, 1999. It’s a third-person game in which you play a
nerdy guy who’s just won the lottery and bought a mysterious old house. You and
your computer programmer girlfriend are planning on bringing in the New Year together.

The
interesting thing about this mansion is that, even though it’s old, it’s been
retrofitted with an amazing array of digital devices. In fact, it’s what you would
call a “smart” house–everything computerized, and everything connected.

Your
character drinks just a little too much champagne and passes out. When you wake
up, alone, you quickly realize something is very, very wrong.

Oh-oh. Yep,
that’s right–the computer network that runs the house wasn’t Y2K-compliant!

The
goal of the game, then, is to work your way through the house, rescue your girlfriend,
foil the screwed-up computer system, and install the Y2K compliance software.

Sounds
simple right? Well … actually it is.

This is a third-person game with
a rather odd interface that has irritated some players. The main character isn’t
exactly speedy, and you do have to practice patience as he shuffles to and fro
throughout the mansion. What made this bearable for me was the almost hyperactive
floating camera. Reminiscent of the original Alone in the Dark, the camera
is constantly moving and switching points of view. Since I generally find third-person
games too static visually, this feature really helped me enjoy the proceedings
more.

Like all stuck-in-a-peculiar-mansion games, the house in Y2K gradually
opens up as you solve more puzzles. Most of these puzzles have to do with dealing
with locked safes and unhappy computers. Some of them are pretty standard, but
some are quite entertaining. My favorite involves a wall of amusingly vocal animatronic
game trophies, who chat you up as you try to fix their circuits.

An area
I constantly carp on in games is the quality of the acting. In this department,
Y2K has an ace in the hole in Dan Castellaneta, one of the most talented
voice men in showbiz (he is the voice of Homer Simpson and was one of the troupe
of actors on the original Tracy Ullman Show). Having someone of Castellaneta’s
ability in the lead role is a great asset to the game.

Y2K is quite
short, but I had a good time playing it. If there had been more to it, I would
have given it a higher grade. As it is, I give it an overall C+.

System
Requirements: Pentium 166
Windows 95/98 with
DirectX 6.1 or later (included)
16 MB RAM
100 MB minimum available hard
drive space
DirectX certified sound and video card
8X or faster CD-ROM
drive
100% Microsoft-compatible mouse