Innocent Until Caught

The Good
Yes, Jack T. Ladd could be a cool guy, a mixture of Bruce-Willis-style toughness and macho-man humour, in short: Han Solos unsuccessful young brother. And Innocent Until Caught needs a zynical hero, as everyone else would lose all credibility and sympathy in no time, in a plot that's silly on purpose. It happens nevertheless, because Jack could be a cool guy, but he isn't, and this is only the most important failure in a game that's a prime example for bad design.

The Bad
Is it unfair to blame a game for an uncomfortable interface from today's point of view? Weren't all interfaces uncomfortable in these days? No, they weren't, thanks to Lucasfilm Games' SCUMM system. Okay, penalty point for Innocent Until Caught. Much more important, however, is the fact that there's almost no structure in the game, no guidance for puzzles that are plainly unfair. I know, you want examples. Did you know you can break into a bank using a mushroom and a fly? Yeah, me neither. Deposit the mushroom on the vault wall, free the fly; when it touches the mushroom, it'll explode. No, I've consulted the walkthrough, didn't you? There's really not much incentive to solve these puzzles, as the plot is as weak as Jack's jokes. There's nothing worse than a guy who thinks he's funny, when he isn't.

The Bottom Line
Back in the days when adventure games were plenty, there were bad ones as well. This is one of them. It could have been interesting, but the bad game design spoils all good approaches.

The Good
One or two puzzles were interesting, and the graphics and sound were generally quite good. I suppose you could say that it was nice to see a realistic adventure game free of elves, pirates and wizards.

The Bad
The puzzles were often quite illogical, and the solutions bordered on the ridiculous. There was often little reason why you'd find a particular object in a particular place. Thanks to the interface's muddled selection of options, it was all too frequent to be stumped on a puzzle, only to find that you the right basic idea but weren't using the noun-verb combination the programmers thought of.

Jack T Ladd was quite an odious character, which hardly boosts your will to see him escape jail. His one-liners were rarely witty in any way, unlike Guybrush, Sam & Max or Brandon in the first Kyrandia game.

The mouse pointer moved ridiculously slowly and jerkily, which often meant you could pass over objects several times while attempting to pick them up. The game also become muddled when you had more objects in your inventory than the programmers expected.

The Bottom Line
A point and click adventure similar to the Lucasfilm classics, but not as good as them, due to a flawed interface, shambolic programming and lax design, and the self-consciously 'look how lewd and 'adult' I am' feel. Like too many Psygnosis titles, it was pretty but featured too little gameplay

The Good
Ages ago, I thought that Psygnosis, as a game company, mostly made action games, but I didn't believe that they were capable of producing an adventure game like Innocent Until Caught. Guess I was wrong. Then again, that's probably because Divide by Zero joined up with them in order to create the game. On with the review. Master criminal Jack T. Ladd is in serious trouble. You see, while exploring the universe somewhere in the Tayte System, Jack is pursued by a ship and arrested by the IRDS for tax evasion. They interrogate Jack, and finding that there is no money in his possession, orders Jack to pay up in 28 days, or otherwise they will hunt him down and then exterminate him.

Jack lands somewhere near a spaceport in Badside, and eventually, he is asked by a local pawn shop owner to search for three valuable items and bring them to him. Later, after landing himself in jail, Jack learns that a ruthless dictator plans to use a mysterious device called the Transatron to blow up whole star systems. At the early stages of the game, Jack can only go to eight locations, including the alley, subway, pawnshop, brothel, bar, bikie area, bock docks, and spaceport. If you think that this is enough locations to explore, think again. As you progress through the adventure, you are required to take a subway train to more locations such as Regurgi and East Eruk. These and more locations have plenty of stuff for you to do.

Let's talk about the interface. The interface itself is just your ordinary adventure game interface. It's located at the bottom of the screen, and consists of a mini-map on the left. Next to this is the action area, which consists of six icons, along with the word "STATUS' below it, and the inventory window just to the right of it. The action area has icons are (in that order) pick up, use, walk, look, magnify, and talk. You will mostly be WALKing throughout the game, for traveling between locations within the same area, so I don't see why this icon shouldn't be first on the action area, like Sierra did in their games. The magnify icon (the blinking eye) is so useful for searching for tiny objects to pick up. When you talk to different characters, you are taken to a different interface what I like to call the "conversation interface". This is where both faces of you and the character will appear in separate ovals, and you watch the conversation taking place. However, it is very likely that you get to choose what Jack says next, and can contain up to five choices. Some of the characters you meet are nice. You get to befriend someone called Narm, who you have to put up with for the rest of the adventure. Furthermore, I believe that Narm will meet you in the next adventure as well.

There is no scoring system so you score for the actions that are required to complete the game. But, like KGB/Conspiracy, you can see how much of the adventure you have completed. If you manage to find the three items that the pawnshop owner asks for then return it to him, for instance, you've already completed about 40% of Innocent. You are also given a rank, and that rank varies depending on how far you get. So, at the start of the game, you are a "Novice", but eventually become "Offender", "Petty Thief", "Burglar", "Criminal", "Fugitive", and "Master Criminal". When you complete the game, your rank will be "Jack T. Ladd!!!", but I don't consider that a rank.

Some parts of Innocent are a bit funny, with the barman from Tayte showing up wherever Jack goes, and the names of some of the characters, like Narm N'Palm and P'PauD'P'Pau. Even telling somebody to do the wrong actions can also be funny. For instance, the second time you land in jail, you can ask Narm to fetch the jail key, and Narm will come back saying that the jail key was hard to reach, so he stole the key that opens the towel dispenser inside the men's toilet in the spaceport. But, ask Narm to create a diversion, and he'll say that he blew up a Oil Refinery on the coast miles away.

The graphics in Innocent are 256-color VGA, which is the number of colors that you expect from an decent adventure game made in 1993. There are some cinematic sequences throughout some parts of the game, where every moving object is 3D-like. The sound can be played through Sound Blaster, Roland, or Adlib. Unfortunately, when I selected Sound Blaster or Roland via the setup program, Innocent didn't like it, and so I couldn't hear any sound effects, but I really liked the music. The game can also be played by mouse or keyboard.

The Bad
When your inventory window contains too many items, the window will suddenly become too crowded, and there are no scroll buttons to scroll to the next bit, so you have to put up moving things around, so you can manipulate them. The labyrinth that you have to get through in the middle of the game sucks. I've been trying to get through it for at least two days, and the lack of good navigation by Jack himself caused frustration.

The Bottom Line
Innocent is an average game with nice music, detailed graphics, and 3D-like cinematic, that has to be enjoyed by experienced adventure game players. If you like this game, perhaps you'll like the sequel. ***