Mini-review of Gateway

Introduction:
	Gateway is a mixed text and graphics game based on Frederick
	Pohl's sicence fiction novel called Gateway.

Graphics (quality, animations, cut scenes):
	Gateway is a mixed graphics and text game, basically a static
	1/4 screen graphics picture which displays a picture of your
	current location.  The remainder of the game is pure
	text-based.  This is the second game I have played which used
	this game engine, the other one being Eric the Unready.  I
	enjoyed both of these games, and in both cases, the game
	engine was partly responsible.  It turns out that I enjoy this
	mixed mode game; just enough graphics to help place you in
	space, with all the richness available via textual
	descriptions.

	The cut-scenes are quite good.  The same cut scenes are shown
	over and over, but hitting the escape key skips over them.

Sound (music, voices, special effects)
	No voices.
	Music and sound effects were minimalist and effective.

Story (plot, theme, depth):
	Read Frederick Pohl's novel called Gateway for the relevant
	background.  Your character is a prospector wanting to get
	rich by finding useful Heechee technology.  The plot thickens
	as the game progresses, moving into the usual "save the
	universe" quest.

Characters (depth, development, interaction):
	The story is mostly plot, with all other elements being quite
	minimal.  This game is based on an old-style science fiction
	novel where the plot's the thing, not characters.  This
	doesn't jurt the game, since the plot works pretty well.

Puzzles (difficulty, uniqueness, suitability, ugliness, linearity):
	The puzzles are all quite logical, well integrated with the
	story, and not too hard.  My wife and I managed to complete
	the game without any hints, so it can't be all that tough.  We
	usually get stuck on at least one puzzle in game, usually
	because we forgot to pick up some object, or we just didn't
	search an area hard enough.  This game seems to be
	particularly free of that sort of problem, mostly because it's
	a text game.  You don't have to pixel hunt in a text game.
	Text games usually have a verb-hunting issue, but it was
	pretty minor in this game.

Controls (user interface, save/restore, sound/video adjustments):
	Legend's mixed text/graphics game engine -- which I find
	wonderful.  I wish this engine were available to the IF
	community, since even the minimalist graphics enhance the game
	playing experience tremendously.

Bugs or problems:
	The game hung several times, forcing me to kill it and
	restart.  The usual culprit was a switch-over into a cutscene.
	Probably just a DOS compatibility issue.

Pros:
	A very enjoyable game running on a very nice game engine.

Cons:
	Hangs on my machine a few times, but nothing unrecoverable.

Conclusion:
	This game may be be very dated in terms of technology, but
	it's a winner.  If my experience is any guide, you will have a
	really hard time finding a copy, but you should try hard.  You
	won't be disappointed.

Some thoughts about the game engine and production costs:
	Both Gateway and Eric the Unready prove that high quality
	graphics and sound aren't required to create a great game.
	Both of these games make me wish that Legend was still in the
	business of producing adventure games using this engine.  This
	game engine would allow the production of extremely cheap
	games compared to modern graphics-intensive games.  Lower
	production costs could allow the odd bad game to be produced
	without completely killing the company, and the successes
	wouldn't have to sell 100,000 copies to just break even.  I
	wonder if the future of successful adventure game development
	is in a lower cost engine, where text is still king, but
	graphics are present to help set the scene.