The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"The Game Sure To Give You Carpal Tunnel Syndrom!"

This text adventure does not pave the way for a new form of game play. This game does not travel into new ways of thinking. Heck, it doesn’t even have a battle in the entire game. But what this game does have, is a hilarious mode of playing the oldest form of Internet play: Text. It doesn’t have graphics, doesn’t have sound, it’s just writing. And boy, these people sure know how to make reading fun.

Storyline: This is going to be brief since a lot of information would surely spell spoilers. But really, you are Arthur Dent, a British man who has a strange liking for tea and a bad headache. You are getting out of bed, just about a half an hour before the destruction of the Earth, that your friend Ford Prefect, -whose name itself is a British insider joke- has informed you of.

Gameplay ---8/10--- It’s just another classic text game. Its main purpose is making Science Fiction come alive with comedy involved. I seriously suggest reading the Hitchhiker Trilogy: A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and Life, the Universe and Everything. It really doesn’t help you much, but it’s worth the wait. Plus, you now know your basic characters: Ford Prefect, Arthur Dent (that’s you), Tricia (Trillion), and Zaphod.

Controls ---9/10--- It’s great! Utterly fantastic! I love the huge amount of choices you can make. You can swear at a robot, or congratulate Ford. However, one drawback is that the screen doesn’t give you all the control options needed in the game. You definitely need to do a lot of guess work, look at a FAQ, or pray if you haven’t played a text-adventure game before.

Replay Value ---8/10--- This game has a lot of replay value because of the amazing amount of choices in front of you. There are an infinitesimal amount of ways to die, sleep, irritate, and get drunk, feed dogs, kill, and enjoy this high quality game. You even have fun bosses, bosses per se, but anyways, you can go wild. Cussing is hard to work, but other phrases like, “Ford, are you retarded?” Can spark a few comments or two if used correctly.

Buy/Rent? Well, neither is an option. The only way to play this game is online. Try entering “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game” on a major search engine. Believe me, it’s not a short game if you want to do everything.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/19/02, Updated 05/19/02