Game Review: Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (PC, Infocom)

42. There, I’ve said it. At this point, you either think I’m crazy, or you can guess where the rest of this review is heading. If you can’t tell by now, I’m a huge fan of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. From the cult BBC TV adaptation in 1981 (where I first encountered the Douglas Adams classic), the ever expanding series of novels or the original radio dramas that started it all off, I’ve loved the adventurees of Arthur Dent and his strange electronic encyclopedia…

Admittedly, The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy is something of an acquired taste and while fans like myself regard it as a timeless classic that still holds up today almost 50 years after it was first broadcast, others don’t get the quirky British humour. So any games released were always going to have a niche appeal from the start and while there were a few unofficial titles, Infocom joined forces with Adams himself to create this text adventure…

A Beginners Tour Of Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

If you’ve never encountered it before, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is a strange hybrid of sci-fi, comedy, and subtle social commentary, all in search of the answer to the ultimate question – of life, the universe, and everything. You take on the role of Arthur Dent – a typically average human – who awakens to find his home is about to be demolished to make way for a bypass. With all attempts to save his house failing, he’s met by his rather strange friend Ford Prefect and from that moment his life is going to change forever.

Ford reveals that he is in fact an alien and that the Earth itself is about to be destroyed and they only have a few minutes to prepare for an escape. Managing to just in time, they hitch a lift on a Vogon spaceship (who are the ones responsible for destroying the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass, no less) and from there it’s one adventure through space after another. Still in his PJs, it’s just Arthur, Ford and a trusty intergalactic encyclopedia to help him along the way…

Grab Your Towel

As with most text adventures, Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is narrative driven and you play from Arthur Dent’s perspective. Everything is described as seen from his point of view and you interact by typing in short commands, typically 2-4 words long. Most of the common commands used in text adventures are there or are easy to figure out during play, although there are a few strangely enough that the interpreter doesn’t seem to understand.

Solving puzzles will earn you points towards and overall score (displayed at the top of the screen) and the number of moves you have taken is also tracked. The latter is important as some actions in the story progress independently of whatever you do so you need to think and act quickly, and even doing nothing or looking around counts as taking a “move”.

Time Waits For No One

While there’s no timer as such, your moves are counted as I just mentioned. This plays a critical part throughout the game as key events progress each time you make a move. This can be anything from moving from one location to another, picking an object up, or even looking in your inventory so you need to be aware of these time-sensitive elements of the plot. For a game that is dependent on its interpreter being able to understand what the player wants and is trying to do, this seems to be a strange gameplay mechanic to include, especially when some common words and phrases aren’t in the game’s vocabulary.

For me, text adventures are all about solving puzzles and being able to play at a casual pace taking as much time as possible rather than having to worry if I’m going to run out of moves before it’s game over. While I appreciate that there are elements of the original story do have an aspect of threat and tension, that doesn’t translate well to a non-action title where a large part of the challenge for the player is trying to figure out the words to use to solve a problem and not just the problem itself.

Groundhog Day

One thing that I found incredibly frustrating was the number of “puzzles” that were solved through repetition. Right at the start of the game, there’s one fundamental problem that can only be solved by typing WAIT no fewer than six times in a row – three to trigger one story event, and three more to solve the puzzle. There are other puzzles that are encountered during the game that also require continued repetition, but again there’s no indication as to how many times you need to do something, or what you have to do afterwards. Too few times and you won’t complete the task, too many and you could even end up being killed and it’s game over!

In fact, even interacting with something in the wrong way will break the loop in such a way that it can’t be completed so your only option is death or to quit and restart. The puzzle at the beginning is a perfect example of this. When you first meet Ford, you are offered a towel while you’re lying down in front of the bulldozer. If you take it from him he walks off and then it’s impossible to proceed in the game!

Changing The Goalposts

It’s not just the repetition in some of the puzzles that I found annoying, but others that seemed to be never ending. When you’re trying to get the all-important Babel Fish that you need throughout the game (for the uninitiated, a small fish you place in your ear that will automatically translate any language that you hear!) at first it seems like a fairly straightforward puzzle to solve.

However, that soon proves not to be the case and needs a chain of puzzles to be solved before you can finally get it, but with the narrative text giving no clues to what you need to do. Certainly the use of one object with the second puzzle doesn’t even mention one thing you need to interact with in the environment! Puzzles like this, and others that seem to defy logic stop the game from being challenging and fun and make it more a case of guesswork and luck.

Presentation

As a text adventure, there’s nothing to speak of when it comes to graphics or sound with Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Unlike other publishers, Infocom made the conscious decision to keep their games text only so they could have complex parsers and more descriptive text instead. This isn’t a problem as I’d been used to playing games like this right since I first played Adventureland on the Vic 20. However, what lets this down is how basic everything looks.

Of the three versions I’ve looked at, this is probably the easiest on the eye. The PC version runs full screen with grey text on a black screen offering a comforable viewing experience with a good level of contrast. While the Atari ST version was similar with dark text on a light screen, I just found this slightly easier to read. As I said previously, both are a vast improvement over the windowed approach taken by the Amiga version.

However, I did notice something that seemed to be a slight glitch in the game engine on the PC when I tried to go into the pub (see the screenshot earlier). It didn’t appear to be part of the game (as it does have moments where it mocks the player) and it quickly sorted itself out, but I was surprised to see instability in an engine that Infocom had been using for several years at this point.

For The Fans

I can’t deny that this hasn’t been crafted with care and passion for the books and radio dramas. The adaptation of the story and humour throughout has clearly been written by Adams himself and Infocom’s Steve Meretzky who wrote the actual game certainly knows how to deliver the goods when it comes to writing a rock solid adventure. But the combination here simply doesn’t work.

Getting the balance right for any licensed game isn’t easy, but with arcade games it’s probably easier when a lot are designed as generic platform or action titles. But when the plot of a movie, book or TV show is central to the game itself as it is here with Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy that sadly makes it inaccessible to all but the most devoted of its loyal fanbase.

And that’s probably the game’s biggest drawback. Even as a huge fan, there were some scenes I couldn’t quite remember verbatim and it meant I was left scratching my head when it came to solving puzzles. So if I struggled, I dread to think how a non-fan would cope with the game. To be honest, I don’t think they would have had a chance and it’s such a shame that this was made to  be so alienating rather that trying to draw new fans in.

Overall

This is one of those times where a game simply fails to live up to the hype surrounding it. No matter what format I’ve played this on – going right back to when it was first released and I bought it for the Commodore 64 – it’s been a disappointment. Truthfully, even as a fan of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy I couldn’t get past the inherent flaws in this interactive adaptation.

Obviously, I love the underlying story at the heart of it as that’s fundamentally unchanged, but the frustrating and repetitive puzzles are what impact on its playability. Despite the momentary bug, this is the best version of all three that I have played purely down to its presentation, but it’s still a struggle to endure.

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