<!--
	Title: (SOFTWARE GALLERY) Border Zone
	Author: Art Lewis Kimball
	Source: Run, v5(7)
	Date: July 1988
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

<div style="color: #004488; font-weight: bold; padding: 0.25em; float: right; font-size: 2em;">C+</div>

<blockquote style="margin: 1em inherit; font-size: 1.25em; font-style: italic;">I Spy,<br>
You Spy,<br>
We All Spy!</blockquote>

Perhaps you shouldn't have watched Murder on the Orient Express so often.
It's making this otherwise peaceful train trip seem spooky. You even
dreamed that a spy broke into your compartment and handed you an important
document. He'd been shot, but he left before you could ask any questions.
Now there's blood on the carpet, and that piece of paper you're holding
looks very sinister!

So begins Border Zone, a text adventure that departs from the Infocom
norm with a number of innovations.

There are three central characters in Border Zone: an innocent business
man, a young American spy and a ruthless KGB agent. As they are intertwined
in an assassination plot, you get the opportunity to play from all
three points of view. The successful completion of each of three parts of
the game throws you into a continuation of the drama as a different
character. It's an interesting concept and one that works relatively well.

You're the businessman in part one, and you must figure out a way to
deliver the document to your contact despite the fact that you don't know
who your contact is; and there are KGB agents and police crawling all
over the place! In part two, you're the American spy, trapped behind the border
and trying to keep from freezing to death while avoiding the border
guards, dogs, searchlights and various other traps. In part three, as the KGB
agent, you have to stop the assassination attempt without revealing the fact
that you're a double agent.

Unfortunately, one of the new features of Border Zone is responsible
for the game being much less interesting than it might have been. This
is real-time, where the clock is always running, even when you pause the
game and stop the action. The game has some very clever puzzles that, with
out the real-time pressure, could've been expanded upon to make them
more challenging and interesting.

It comes down to a matter of frantically searching for the right move to
make until you get killed, and then restoring a saved position and going on to
the next puzzle. All three games are actually quite short; once you've figured
out the moves, the three scenarios can be played in about 30 minutes.

The clock in this game runs at two different speeds—fast and slow—and
you can change the speed in each section. The faster time is meant to challenge
expert players. However, even though I consider myself an expert
player, in part three, I found it impossible to perform the required actions
in the time given.

Infocom once again features online Invisiclues in Border Zone. Invisiclues
can be both a blessing and a burden. On the one hand, you are never frustrated
by being completely stuck on a puzzle for days. On the other hand, it
takes considerable willpower not to run for a him every time you're stuck.

The standards at Infocom are such that it's virtually impossible for them to
put out a bad game, but I hope that the real-time experiment was just that. The
very features that make Infocom such a powerhouse in the interactive fiction
field seem to have suffered a bit in Border Zone. *(Infocom, Inc., 125 Cambridgepark
Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140. C-64/$34.95.)*

<p class="bold right" style="font-variant: small-caps;">—Art Lewis Kimball<br>Tuscola, IL.</p>
