Suspended

The Good
In every Infocom game I can think of, except this one, you play the role of one person, interacting with the world. In Suspended, however, your character is frozen in a cryogenic tube, in a state of suspension. Your hands and eyes in the game world are six robots - each with their own specialized sense (sight, hearing, touch, etc).

This was a very unique concept, for the text adventure genre - every room, and every item has six possible descriptions, depending on which robot you are currently controling. The game could not be completed, unless teamwork between all six robots was used. Luckily, the game comes with a map of the underground complex, and a marker for each robot, enabling you to keep track of their locations.

Your "score" is based on the number of casualties on the planet; your "score" increases with the more time you take to repair surface systems. Time is short, however - most of the repairs you need to perform are "band-aid" fixes, and you must focus on the task at hand of repairing the FCs.

The Bad
Turn limits were imposed; this significantly cut down on the ability to explore the complex with each robot. However, to make up for this, the game had configureable difficulty levels. Using a "custom" difficulty level, you can set the number of turns you have. Setting it to a high enough number allows enough time to explore the entire complex.

The Bottom Line
While a departure from the "standard Infocom way" of gameplay, Suspended is still quite enjoyable, and has a fairly good replay value (in that different robots can accomplish the same task, just in a slightly different manner).

The Good
As the 'main' character, you couldn't move, and were trapped in an extremely dark suspended animation cylinder. If that was it, then this would have been an extremely lame game. However, that wasn't it, beacause of the--The Robots. Roaming the compex, monitoring various things, were six robots. They were so diverse, many of them majoring in one particular sense while weak in the other senses, each of them with there unique personalities (especially Poet). I enjoyed the plot. The Plot involved subconsciously monitoring a nation's control station wich had the ability to create nearly-instant havoc or sustain the current tranquility. It was like playing God, but without the freedom, because if you became to lax in your duties some angry folks would come and... well, "take care" of you. Suspended had the ability to put you in the game, with vibrant imagery. I could imagine myself as the robots, with their different sensors, detecting movement and analyzing objects. Also, I think this is one of the first (if not THE first) IF/Adventure game which allowed you to assume the identity of another entity.

The Bad
It was hard. Really hard. The manual was kinda lax on it's duties but there were no angry folks to "take care" of it.

The Bottom Line
It's definitely worth a play-through, and if Infocom/Actionvision were going to remake this game, I'd be one of the people in line at the checkout line. I remember just when I'd really got into cracking the game there was this huge blizard that struck the north-east and our power went down for two v-e-r-y l-o-n-g weeks (almost two weeks, but it seemed like three months). While I sat without electricity I carefuly read the sections of the manual that described the robots, and produced a sketch of each of them.

(DISCLAIMER: These sketches were born intermittently in between other activities -- I'm not a total nerd. Isn't it funny what the lack of electricity can do to you?)

The Good
Having been the "lucky" winner of the Central Mentality Lottery you are to be buried miles beneath the planet and placed in limited cryogenic suspension. You are to sleep for 500 years acting as a failsafe for the computers that control the weather, food production, and traffic. In the VERY unlikely event a disaster occurs that the computer can't handle you will be awoken to fix any problems. Of course a disaster occurs the moment you start the game and you are brought back to consciousness and put in charge of six robots that can perform tasks, investigate the world, and repair damages. Due to limits in technology (and perhaps budget restrictions) each robot is restricted in the way that they perceive and interact with the world.

"A robot who hears but cannot see"

Part board game and part interactive fiction, "Suspended" is Infocom's first high concept game ("A Mind Forever Voyaging" being their other). Instead of controlling yourself you are rendered immobile and your senses (sight, hearing, touch, etc) are spread out and placed into separate robots. Problems usually require you to use the right robot for the job or two separate robots together to get a complex task finished. A map and player pieces were included that let you track where each robot is helping you plan your moves

"A robot who sees but cannot wander"

One of the most interesting things about this game is how it was shaped by the limits of computer technology at the time. It would be almost impossible to create this game today using state of the art graphics and sound. Most of the robots couldn't really see and only one was capable of hearing sound. Their world is rendered using prose and your imagination. Can you imagine taking this game to producers today and trying to get it made? Only interactive fiction could possibly create this world which is a shame because, besides a few dedicated individuals, it is all but dead.

"A robot who feels but cannot hear"

The parser is very good and not too restrictive. It isn't as good as Infocom's later games but it works well enough that you won't have to fight the interface when solving problems. The replay value is high because once you solve the game you can replay it again and again trying to reduce the number of casualties on the surface and increase your score. You can also specify the level of difficulty by setting certain parameters (such as how many turns pass before the first and second earthquake, how long before the humans on the surface wait to come and disconnect you, etc). This allows you to make the game as hard or easy as you wish and experiment with different solutions.

The Bad
Because you know nothing of the complex (and working with a time limit) you will spend your first games just getting to know what you can and can't do and where everything is located. I don't think the game is winnable the first dozen times you play because once a 100 or so turns pass you will be removed from the game by angry humans from the surface. The only way to win is to know ahead of time the solution to certain problems (how to fix Iris, where to move the robots at the beginning of the game, etc). This isn't terrible but it does break the illusion the game creates by forcing you to rely on "past-life" knowledge.

The Bottom Line
One of the most innovative games ever created with only a few weak spots. Any fan of interactive fiction should play this immediately.

The Good
What are text adventures best at, that graphic adventures cannot do? They relate everything via text, so if you are simuating a sense like smell or thought patterns based in Shakespere, you can only do it here. That is the point of this game, where you try to save the world by assuming the personas of 5 different robots, who each percive the world in diffrent ways. Thus, only by getting them all in the same room can you truly understand what is there. Also, game is slightly "replayable" (you get a score based on how efficently you solved the puzzles).

The Bad
Hard due to the subject matter, but oh so rewarding when you figure it out.

The Bottom Line
The best (and most abstact) adventure game of our time.