"Laughs, high-tech gizmos, and alien brainwashing for all ages!"

Having enjoyed Ultima IV despite/because of never getting into the Stygian Abyss, I found a promising title in Babbage's one day labeled ''2400 A.D.'' by Origin and Chuck Bueche, who is Chuckles the Jester in the Ultima series. It wasn't as expensive as other games so I decided to take a shot. Simplistically, it looks like Ultima IV in the future with a grid view and futuristic icons, but 2400 wisely doesn't pretend to be Ultima. It certainly lacks Ultima's moral implications, folklore and storyline, but I find that 2400 A.D. has plenty of humor without too much slapstick, is easy to learn and play, and has a rather imaginative view of a future dystopia. Granted, the humor can be blunt and there may not be as much depth to the game as Wasteland, the other great dystopian Apple RPG, but 2400 A.D.'s humor is cheerier, cleaner and even campy, helping make it well worth your time. You are basically a one-man team who must gather information from a group of people called the Resistance who hide out in the underground from the Tzorg invaders who have taken over Metropolis. Using a little adventure game logic, these worthy folks, even with a fully operational black market and a good deal of information scattered between them, never got organized enough to assault the Tzorg Authority Complex in the middle of the map(you start out almost next to it, which is slightly eerie) so you have to gather information and weapons, neither of which you have. Along the way you'll need to kill robots for energy credits, which can buy bigger and better stuff.

The game is wonderfully easy to start; you dole out ninety-nine points among the four attributes, strength, agility, intelligence, and charisma, each of which improves(up to ninety-nine) when you perform a certain action successfully. After that you're dropped off at the tracking station(citizens are required to check in every so many moves) and look for your first mission. The city is a great place. There's a full-color fold-out map that comes with the game, so you'll never get too terribly lost overground. Although many buildings are connected by overpasses a story or two above ground and allow for considerable exploration, the real fun begins when you try to exit the central zone to the restricted zones(North: Megatech, South: University, East: Housing, West: Administration) in search of the underground. There are robots, called checkers, who look like heart monitors on legs, and they run after you. If they catch you, you are sent back to the central zone with a social demerit. Too many social demerits and you will be asked to go to the Rehabilitation Center--decline and combat ensues. Combat is nicely done because it blends in with just walking around. You get a turn, and robots get a turn, but they usually don't take it unless you've broken the law. It's a lot of fun to walk up to a robot, blast it, and flee to where its comrades can't attack you simultaneously. If you're lucky you can get a fallen bystander to shield you further, and if things get too tough you can try running away or using the walkways!

The game uses the keyboard, with IJKM to move around. There's also ''Z'' for Zurrender, useful when you're lost, and you can push objects around or climb on them--or even people! There is also using an item or a naughty favorite, (L)oading from a power node, which will make the robots quite unhappy. The range of high-tech items is commendable, with a grid read telling your location, a scanner showing a map of the area, passcode and zone access cards, plastiform for healing, and shields that can eventually make you invincible to the lower-class robots.

Yet within the embattled city of Metropolis, there's a clear humor value. There are many hilarious places to stop at(Mitch's Mashed Bugs, anyone?) and ways to go wrong in 2400 A.D., and getting thrown in jail is not a permanent setback as your items are confiscated and put somewhere. People you converse with have weird things to say, often making fun of each other when you talk to them but still giving hints. One person has locked himself in his room, and the person outside tells you his opinion on that. Computers give ''random annoying error.'' The checker robots and the searcher robots(look for contraband) may be less cool than C3P0, but they are at least as funny. And the big one may be the random public service announcements about an extra ration of Soy Protein or how synthetic potatoes are available or about the rehabilitation of ten more citizens, your government at work. I've even laughed after getting run over by a subway train(I _have_ to say, the Tzorgs may be ruthless, but their trains run on time.) And of course the name ''Tzorgs'' is funny and suggests a trashy sci-fi movie.

Although graphics have become more detailed in recent years they haven't necessarily become more clever. In this game you'll see examples of clever and relatively low-resolution graphics. Simple contrasts are used powerfully--the Tzorg Authority and Rehabilitation center have blue walls, while other buildings have orange and the underground has a green color scheme. The floor icons are slick, frequently showing moving machinery or a mazework of pipes with one busted. You'll find vegetation in surprising places, and even the garbage dump, with trash you can and can't walk on being subtly different, is believable. The people seem to be wearing triangular(camp sci-fi alert) tops and it's cute how they wave and how there are short and tall people. The underground black-marketers, who open up their coats as if to offer you a gold toothbrush, are clever, and the doctors and lazy fellows that pop up around the city are well done. The walkways are also well animated, and the robots have some neat variety--the sentries look like multicolored R2D2's and there are some that look like cranes or trucks or eyeballs. Sadly, the tougher the monsters get the uglier they are.

The sound is solid as well. There are obligatory attempts at high-tech, with sirens when you break a rule, blips when a public announcement shows up, and garbled noise when you use a teleporter. You even get a clinking when an item breaks. Not much is needed, but what's there is strong.

In conclusion, 2400 A.D. is a very forgiving game that you will enjoy a good deal. Combat is quick and fun and can even include strategy. The puzzles, while not overly tricky, have decent variety and don't rely solely on your conversations, and some make nice use of timing issues or special commands. Although it takes a while to find robots to beat up when you need cash and there may be an unintentional easier alternate way to solve the game at the end as a result of a programming oversight, this game provides a moderate challenge with sci-fi satirical flair. It's a breezy game where you see exotic scenery, get to blast robots, hack computers, pick up money, and get neat high-tech weapons before the final assault on the fortress which would be mad without your impossibly high-powered weapons and armor.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 09/21/01