Spider and Web

by Andrew Plotkin profile

Science Fiction, Espionage
1998

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Number of Reviews: 18
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4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Cool idea but a little too narrow, September 5, 2011
by Deboriole (San Diego, CA)
Related reviews: Espionage, gadgets, spy

I have to honest. I did not make it through this game. I was full of excitement when I started to play, but as soon as I typed 'i' and was carrying nothing of importance -- and later discovered this wasn't entirely true -- I became a little annoyed. I understand the reasoning behind this (because the player knows nothing at the start) but I found the handicap of this sort of play to be more bothersome than cool. The last straw for me was... (Spoiler - click to show)hiding from the guards. I knew I had to distract them with a noise and spent more than an hour trying to put together different pieces of spy equipment (voice transmitter, etc.) to throw them off. When I finally looked up the answer and saw all I had to do was throw a metal object, I decided to stop playing. In other words, there seemed to be endless combinations of how I could distract the guards, yet none of them worked -- which disappointed me.

I would recommend this game to anyone who loves tinkering with gadgets and doesn't mind a somewhat forced-control sort of environment. This just wasn't the right game for me.

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Plumberduck, April 17, 2012 - Reply
But that's what's fascinating about the game - the puzzles are never "How do I do something?" - they're always (Spoiler - click to show) "How do I make my actions fit the narrative my interrogator has in his head?" There are several ways you COULD get by the guards, but only one that matches the evidence your enemy has - and which he slowly reveals to you, as you try different approaches. THAT's the game - not simply accomplishing objectives. (Spoiler - click to show) Especially since most of the things you're telling him are lies anyway...
brandonmack, April 2, 2012 - Reply
I quite agree with this: since (Spoiler - click to show)most of the things that occur don't really matter to the end of the game, more options should be made available. You can use the scan scrambler with multiple negative tools, why can you not use multiple tools to distract the guards? I realize this does matter a little to the plot, but not really. It would work fine otherwise! As it is, though, I believe it works fine. There are minor changes I would have made if I were the author, but I still thought the game was overall quite good.
brandonmack, April 2, 2012 - Reply
I quite agree with this: since (Spoiler - click to show)most of the things that occur don't really matter to the end of the game, more options should be made available. You can use the scan scrambler with multiple negative tools, why can you not use multiple tools to distract the guards? I realize this does matter a little to the plot, but not really. It would work fine otherwise! As it is, though, I believe it works fine. There are minor changes I would have made if I were the author, but I still thought the game was overall quite good.
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