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The Space Bar

In Space Bar, you are a cop investigating a murder. You interview a variety of aliens, one of whom must be the culprit. You are empathic, and by talking to these aliens you can relive their experiences, and each experience, assuming you solve all the puzzles necessary to get through it, will give you a clue (or so the manual says).

Fair enough, but I couldn't solve any of the puzzles. First I talk to one alien, go into his world, wander around in confusion, give up and come back to the bar. Then I do this with another alien. Then with another. Then I read a cheat. Then I go to the alien I cheated on, move a little way forward and get stuck again. Then I read the cheat again, and see I actually did the right thing and apparently didn't wait long enough, even though I click on the wait button four times.

This in itself wouldn't be so bad if the game had something else to recommend it. For example, the manual describes Space Bar as "A Comic Sci-Fi Adventure," so if it were actually funny this would help enormously. I mean, sometimes it is funny, such as the poorly researched cowboy bar with a plaque next to a sea-diving helmet that says: "Armored helmets were required gear for the well-equipped cowboy, in order to fend off attacks from their fierce enemies, the Indians and the Nazis," but an awful lot of it ranges from mildly amusing to kind of irritating. You are allowed to converse at great length with people throughout the game, and one must assume that its author, Steven Meretzky, believes that his dialogue is so amusing that we will want to hear lots of it, but really, it's no more than cute, and often less.

But if that in itself weren't enough to put me off the game, there's all the CD changing. Basically, the bar is on one CD and the flashback sequences are on another (I don't know what's on the third). So this is how it works. You talk to an alien. He has a flashback and you switch CDs. When the flashback is over you switch CDs again. Now, let's say you saved the game in the bar, and you screwed up in the flashback and want to restore. When you restore you'll have to switch CDs, then get to the flashback and switch CDs again. Or let's say you save in the flashback, and then you die, which isn't hard to do. When I died at one point the game asked me to switch CDs, then when I restored I had to switch back. Now, if the keyboard shortcuts to restore games worked this might not be such a problem, but they didn't.

I borrowed this game from a friend who hasn't played it himself. I am giving it back to him. If, after he plays it, he tells me that it's really quite good once you get into it, I'll borrow it again. But there is no way I'll play this game without some sort of guarantee that it's worthwhile.

-- Charles Herold -2000

Glitches:The shortcut keys to save, restore, exit, didn't seem to work.