The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"One of the Best Text Adventure Games Out There"

Once upon a time people played games where the computer would give them a block of text and the player would type a response, the computer would respond to that, and so on until usually the player died a terrible death after not figuring out the correct way to type an action at a crucial moment. This genre is called the Text Adventure. Infocom was the maker of the premiere text adventure games all through the 1980's and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one of their products.

The first time I played the game was on a computer which was much too modern really to be running something so antiquated. I had a shiny new 386 DX, and I found an old Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy diskette at my Dad's work and brought it home with me to play. It was pretty fun for the few hours it held my interest between games of Master of Orion, which I think is a pretty good accomplishment for a piece of software from 1984.

The game follows the events of the novel loosely, which means that there's much hilarity in-store. The humor is the game's biggest draw and will pull you back in even if you end up getting your character killed in a possibly humiliating manner (like being on the Earth when it's destroyed).

If you're like me and you didn't have a manual, playing the game is somewhat frustrating as you don't really know which verbs are available for interacting with the game world. This can result in quite a few unneeded deaths. I recommend looking it up in a FAQ now that the internet is a nice common feature of life, instead of trying to stumble blindly through the game as I did.

Text adventure games haven't really held up well to the ravages of time, but this one is a little bit special. I understand that the BBC has done a re-release of it recently, so if you'd like to check the game out, that is probably the version you'll have to find. It should provide an hour or two of fun, at least. And maybe bring back that nostalgic feeling.

Now for a quick scoring summary for those of you keeping track of the numbers:

Gameplay: 5

There's not a lot to the gameplay. Type in actions, watch the outcome in text. Guessing the right way to phrase an action to get the desired result is somewhat annoying.

Story: 9

It's a game based on the events and dialogue from one of the most hilarious novels written. It's a great story, and the story is the main reason to keep playing the game.

Graphics: N/A

This is a text adventure game, it has no graphics.

Sound: N/A

This is a text adventure game, it has no sound.

Replay: 1

After playing through it once I didn't feel any urge to replay the game.

Other: N/A

A semi-modern updating of the game, done in the style of Sierra's graphical adventures would be pretty cool.

Overall: 5

Fans of text adventure games should play this, if they haven't. People wanting to check out the genre or get a look into the past of PC gaming should play it. But the old-school nature of the gameplay hasn't held up well to the intervening decades, and if it wasn't for the humor and acting out a great novel, it probably wouldn't be worth investigating at all.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 09/20/06