Review by Oliver Lan

Name:        Orion Burger
Publisher:   Eidos Interactive
Format:      CD
Type:        Adventure

Requires:

O/S:         DOS 5.0+
Processor:   486-66+
RAM:         8Mb+
Graphics:    SVGA
CD-Rom:      X2
Soundcard:   All major cards supported

Tested on:

O/S:         Windows 95
Processor:   Pentium 120
RAM:         32Mb
Graphics:    Matrox Millennium 2Mb WRAM
CD-ROM:      Quad speed
Soundcard:   SB AWE32
Controls:    Mouse

Orion Burger

I reviewed an excellent game this issue, and it had Orion in the title.

Unfortunately it wasn't Orion Burger.

There's one word that always comes to mind with games like this. Of course, we couldn't use that here, so onto the second: PLAYTESTING! Well, let's look at it from the developer/programmer's point of view. Why bother? Who better is there to try out your new baby than yourself. And of course you tried it and (of course) it's fantastic. Yippee! This'll be hotter than anything around! Of course the game's not perfect, but you can ignore the fact that it's incredibly irritating, repetitive, unplayable, slow, boring - it's MINE all right, MINE! All MINE! You can't stop me! It's BRILLIANT! It's MINE! I will release it and RULE THE WORLD!!!!!

Er, right. But you see, I know how it is. I wrote a game once; a great little number called 'Alphabet Invaders' (there were these letters, you see, and...). It was universally acclaimed as being absolutely brilliant. OK, well, universally in this case does mean, well, me. Everyone else thought it was cr*p. Which brings us neatly back to Orion Burger.

Ouch!

But now I'm being unfair. Alphabet Invaders was quite good. At least it was fun for a while (and had a great two player mode and...). But no, I really am being unfair. Because Orion Burger isn't cr*p. No, really.

It's just so damned annoying.

Don't you just hate it when that happens?

You see, the story line is OK. Contrived, silly, nonsensical, but hey, this is a cartoon adventure. It's supposed to be. OK, so it may be just a teeny bit reminiscent of Hitchhiker's Guide, and a very big bit reminiscent of 'Groundhog Day', but as a concept it's fine (it's just the practicalities that are the problem, but more of that later).

OK, well, the Orion Burger company is apparently the largest burger chain in the entire galaxy. So they need meat. And guess just where they've come to get it... Earth.

Hmm, you're thinking, there's going to be a bit about 'one person' now, isn't there, and... ooh, don't tell me, you're thinking, saving the world?

And yes, well, you'd be right. Damn. But, hey, this one's actually quite cunning (on paper...). You see, they couldn't possibly harvest people who were actually intelligent, so they have to test ONE PERSON for intelligence first. No prizes for guessing who that is. Surprisingly, though, you fail at the first test and the Earth's population is quite literally made into mincemeat.

Tum de tum...

Yes?

Oh, the story. Damn, you guessed. Of course, there's a twist - somehow, a sort of galactic welfare group manage to infiltrate the Orion Burger ship and send you back in time - to do it all again. But you get to prepare yourself this time.

And so the game begins.

And so the problems start...

Don't you just hate it when it does that?

Now the central concept of Orion Burger is this time-loop thing. Unfortunately it's also the game's downfall. You see, should you fail to pass any of the tests... you don't. Fail, that is. You just start again. It's not as bad as it may sound, as you do admittedly rush around automatically picking up everything you used the first time around, but then again it is as bad as it sounds, because of all the other bits that aren't automatic. Anything you didn't actually put to use the first time you have to go get again, and let's face it, in an adventure game you just don't want to repeat anything; it's just tedious. And that's even before you've played Orion Burger.

It's the conversation that does it. There's just no way to hurry past the dialogue - you can only sit there and listen to it (lines are spoken only - no text). After the tenth time this does begin to grate a little, especially seeing as some of the 'humorous' voices are more cringe-worthy than anything else (the comedy British accents are absolutely awful - the 'hilarious' Scottish bloke in particular). It just makes the conversations mind-numbingly dull, and it insists on speaking everything aloud, even the bits you yourself have chosen to say, as well as the bits that are clearly irrelevant and put in for humorous effect and/or just to make it a bit more 'realistic'. So even when you know exactly what's about to be acted out, you have to see it again. And again. And it's not fun (or funny).

But hang on, you maybe thinking, why not just reload should something go wrong? But you can't - and it's a hard habit to shake off. It's not that you actually can't re-load, but if you do, it'll think you haven't seen the cut scenes, and delight in showing them to you again. And guess what - you can't skip these either - no, not a single key on the keyboard will rescue you from seeing them again. And again! And again! You find yourself banging at the keyboard (with your head, after a while) in desperation, but to no avail. So despite the fact that you have to go back and pick everything up again, you just have to soldier on. And it's just less fun all the time.

It gets worse. For one thing, because the designers know you can't die, they seem to have taken advantage, and they just love to throw you back and forth at a whim. Just a simple mistake and it's 5 minutes of toe-tapping again. And you can't just use the old risk-it-and-reload strategy, because you can't bear to see yourself fail the test again. ('not the cut scenes... nooooooo..........!')

And guess what, it gets worse again! You don't just go back when you mess up, it's also necessary. You'd have to be an incredible visionary to solve this one straight through. You see, the test is made up of 5 stages, each following on from the other. But at the start you only know what you have to do for the first test. Fair enough, you may say, but you still need items from the first test to complete the second, and so on. So you're supposed to fail, and go back, and get what you need, in what I'm sure is supposed to be a delightfully non linear way. What it actually means is that you never know if you've done quite enough, end up guessing and doing everything stupidly possible, end up solving the puzzles by accident if at all and deriving little satisfaction from it, completely negating the point of the game in the first place. It doesn't help that some of the puzzles are ridiculously contrived - not so much in each single step, but to achieve a certain end can require you to do several totally unrelated things first. Not good, not good. Furthermore, because they know you can always start over, they have absolutely no qualms about leaving you in a no-win situation. Perfectly realistic, OK, but it can just leave you scratching your head for hours when it's just not solvable in your situation! You just have to restart and do game again just to make sure you haven't missed anything.

And finally, yes, it gets worse still. That last point is made even stronger by Orion Burger's one more novel feature to be proud of - it works in real-time. Unlike other, trigger based adventure games (as most are, you do something which causes something else to happen next), things happen at a certain time; if you miss them that's it. Of course this is all made feasible due to the time-loop thing, and realistic it may be, but all it ends up as is yet another stupid, unnecessary excuse to zip you back into the spaceship to view those cut scenes again.

Now, of course, the question that comes to mind is: where were the playtesters? Did they not have any sane person among them to shriek in frustration as a single mis-click whizzes them off to watch the scene again? (The 'I'm ready for the test' button is right next to the options button, and bigger) Or maybe the only people who tried the game were those who created it, who naturally whooped with joy at every scene, at every voice, and who naturally made no mistakes because they knew all the solutions anyway.

I don't know. But someone should have told them.

So you liked it then?

Tsk, tsk, no need to be sarky. The thing is, the game in essence really shouldn't be so bad. It's unfortunate. The game does have a certain charm; you end up liking your character, who out of them all does seem almost real. And as cartoon adventures go it captures the feel of the genre reasonably well. It's just so damned annoying, and you'd need to be blessed with more than saintly patience to get through this one, as it has so many different ways of irritating.

As an adventure alone it would have been niggly but passable (but only just - the puzzles themselves are not wonderful). As the potential torture device of irritation that it is I just cannot recommend it at all.

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Rating: 2/10 (Run away Quickly!)
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