Game Review

Spider and Web

Intrigue. Spy versus spy. Secret hiding places and surprise endings.

If you can figure out how to get to them, that is.

Andrew Plotkin's "Spider and Web" has a bang-up beginning sequence, an interesting give-and-take format with a major NPC, and an intriguing story- within-a-story plot that can't be described well without spoiling the surprise -- but ultimately, I was frustrated by the lack of straightforward playability in this game.

While the game's turning point has a wonderful "Aha!" quality to it, it's a point that I never would have gotten to without relying heavily on a walkthrough solution. And although the descriptions are expansive, the characters' dialogue believable, and the plot is richly complex, I was left feeling that I could have done without some of these features if only I could have really played more of the game for real, without outside intervention.

The game's beginning does a great job of drawing the player into character -- and helping to solve the initial puzzles for you. Your character is a spy who has slipped unseen into an enemy headquarters. As the game's opening unfolds, you discover that you've been caught, and the moves you make are being recounted, in a sense, for an interrogator who demands the details of your break-in. Although you, the player, are seeing these rooms and puzzles for the first time, within the game's narrative the interrogator seems to await your description of how you overcame certain obstacles -- even if you have no idea yet how you might have done so. If you take a false step, the interrogator may interrupt you with a crisp counterpoint on why that move wouldn't be feasible, then warn you not to try to deceive him -- although at this point you're probably just curious to know how to solve the problem that he wants you to confirm you've solved. The interrogator also manages to offer many hints on certain steps that you should or shouldn't take before proceeding, which is impressively interwoven into the NPC's dialogue without appearing too obvious.

As the gameplay progresses, you acquire objects that may help you later, play cat-and-mouse with a series of guards, and -- probably -- spend an inordinate amount of time learning (or trying to learn) to operate a toolcase filled with devices that may be used in conjunction with one another to bypass alarms or get you out of a jam.

You may find, as I did, that the initial novelty of conversing with the interrogator quickly wears off. Your character's responses -- no matter whether to a pointed question or a long-winded, half-rhetorical monologue -- are limited to "yes" or "no." Although it surely would have been a programming nightmare to account for a larger vocabulary, it strains credulity to see the impassioned speeches the interrogator gives in response, so to speak, to your barely maintained half of the conversation.

I enjoyed the aspect of trying to figure out what my character was supposed to do, given that a certain amount of activity was already assumed to be a foregone conclusion. Your exact mission is trickier to determine as you near the end of the game. Once you enter the enemy laboratory proper, you can either seize the secret papers and destroy them on the spot, or take them with you as you make good your escape. Why dying is a certain failure, you can also wind up with an ending where you "fail to make a difference" - - namely, by failing to acquire the secret papers and doing something with them. No points are awarded in this game for solving puzzles.

At one point, your character's survival depends on split-second timing as you need to enter rooms and get out successfully. Saving your game every few moves is the safest way to navigate this dangerous section, but playing too safe throughout the game isn't recommended; you could wind up missing out on important events that move the plot along and will help the story make better sense.

Much of the game's cleverness is best enjoyed after you've experienced the plot's major twist -- and which, again, I think is next-to-impossible without outside help -- and you realize the significance of text that was puzzling the first time it appeared. While enjoyable after the fact, its prose and clever set-up made for good reading but not, ultimately, for a very satisfying game-playing experience.

-- Gillian Pilau

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