James Herbert's The Rats

The Good
The best bit of this game is the text-style adventure. It's good that you only need to select your options instead of manually typing what to do as you in do in most 80s adventure games. The game certainly lives up to a scary atmosphere with constant heartbeats that get faster when danger is around. The screen gets plagued with rats, which makes you tense as you try to choose your next course of action carefully. The grisly details you read, combined with the blood spills and vocal screams give the impression that you're watching and playing a horror movie at the same time. Trial and error to win the adventures without dying is the fun part of them.

The Bad
The strategy part of the game is perhaps too difficult for the most part. You really have too limited resources to keep the rats under control, so the game is quickly over before you know it. It would have been easier if the game had turn-based pacing or mouse control. Sadly you need to make do and struggle through each strategy sequence if you hope to make it to the next adventure episode. Sometimes you won't manage to finish your strategic choices, before you're immediately plunged into the next adventure, making the proceeding strategy part more difficult by the time you get to it.

The Bottom Line
It's fantastic that the publishers of the book also applied a similar careful blood curdling treatment to the video game it was based on. You don't have to read the book to play the game, but it does give you background information, which the game alone does not specify. The adventures are so intriguing you won't even need a walkthrough to play them. This game really could have gotten far with an elaborate update by Horrorsoft with full VGA color, inventory system and click-and-point style controls. This is a game that deserves praise and respects paid to it. Play it, if you dare or if you're not so squeamish.