<!--
	Title: Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2
	Author: Stephen Poole
	Source: Game Players PC Entertainment, v5(5)
	Date: September 1992
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

<p class="article-dropcap">All right, I'll admit it up front: I wasn't playing PC games back
when <strong>Infocom</strong>'s classic text adventures were first released. (In
fact, I had yet to learn how to boot a computer.)</p>

<figure class="float-right-wide">
<img src="/public/img/articles/pcent-review-lgop2/lgop2-screen-shot-1.jpg" alt="A screen shot of a crashed space ship from LGOP2">
<figcaption><em>Humorous touches are sprinkled throughout the stylized graphics in</em> Leather Goddesses.</figcaption>
</figure>

When I finally did try my hand at adventure gaming a few years back, I asked one
of our editors what games he recommended. He asked if I'd ever played any Infocom
games, and when I said no, he immediately began to rave
about games like *Zork*, *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*,
and *Leather Goddesses of Phobos* with a zeal that had me convinced
before he'd even finished speaking.

It turned out that those Infocom games were *so* popular
around the office that there were none left for me to try out.
So you can imagine how excited I was to learn that the
newly revamped **Activision** was releasing *Leather Goddesses
of Phobos 2** (subtitled *Gas Pump Girls Meet the Pulsating Inconvenience
from Planet X*). Finally, here was my chance to experience
an Infocom game, a sequel to a classic, in a format right in
step with the current trends in graphics, interface, and sound.
I figured if it turned out to be half as good as the descriptions
I'd heard of the old Infocom games, I had a real winner on
my hands. It seemed to good to be true....

<figure class="float-left">
<img src="/public/img/articles/pcent-review-lgop2/lgop2-screen-shot-2.jpg" alt="A screen shot of Reverend Layberry from LGOP2">
<figcaption><em>Reverend Layberry's digitized rant is
one of the few cases where the lines are
delivered effectively, but it doesn't hold
any useful information.</em></figcaption>
</figure>

And as the saying goes, if it seems to good to be true, it
probably is. That's not to say *LGOP2* is a bad game; in all
fairness, it does many things better than a lot of other graphic
adventures you could buy. But it has one major problem that
can't be overcome by even the best graphics or sound effects:
it's just too short and too easy.

You won't be tipped off to the game's brevity during the
installation process. *LGOP2* comes on *ten* 1.2 MB diskettes,
and takes up around 15 megs on your hard disk once all the
files are unpacked. With that much disk space, you'd expect
a huge world to explore and tons of problems and puzzles
to solve. But once you've thoroughly cruised all four streets
in tiny Atom City, Nevada, of 1956, you've seen about 90
percent of the game.

The plot of *LGOP2* has potential, especially for folks
who appreciate cheap sci-fi movies from the fifties. A
spaceship from "Planet X" has crashed on the outskirts of
Atom City, and its occupant — Barthgub el Nikki-Nikki, son
of Jelgobar el Zayda-Zayda, or Barth for short — has struck
out in search of equipment to repair his damaged ship. You
can play as one of three characters: Zeke Zarden, the ruggedly
handsome gas-station owner; Lydia Sandler, the
beautiful daughter of the local scientist and alien sympathizer
Dr. Sandler; or Barth.

<figure class="float-right">
<img src="/public/img/articles/pcent-review-lgop2/lgop2-screen-shot-3.jpg" alt="A screen shot of a basement from LGOP2">
<figcaption><em>Go ahead, pull that lever! You can't die
in</em> LGOP2<em>, so give in to your
adventurer's urge to use any item you
come across</em></figcaption>
</figure>

It's not Barth the earth has to worry about, though. It's the
Leather Goddesses of Phobos, who plan on tricking us into
thinking that Planet X is going to invade, then launching their
own attack as we thank them for their help. To win the game
as Zeke or Lydia, you travel to Planet X and Phobos in search
of evidence that will convince the thickheaded officials on
Earth that Phobos is the real threat. As Barth, you've got to
find the parts to repair your ship in order to make the journey.

Most of Atom City's residents have gotten their notions
of extraterrestrials from science-fiction flicks, and it's fun
spotting references to classics like *Invasion of the Body Snatchers*,
*Invaders from Mars*, *The Thing*, *War of the Worlds*, and *The
Incredible Shrinking Man*. There's even a 3-D sci-fi movie
playing at the local theater (yes, it's *really* 3-D — go ahead and
dig out those red-and-blue glasses, because there's another
3-D sequence further along in the game).

<figure class="float-left">
<img src="/public/img/articles/pcent-review-lgop2/lgop2-screen-shot-4.jpg" alt="A screen shot of a 3-D movie theater from LGOP2">
<figcaption><em>Dig out your 3-D glasses before heading to
Atom City's only theater.</em></figcaption>
</figure>

For the most part, the fifties motif is sustained very well.
The screen for saving/loading games and making adjustments
in sound and graphics display is called the "Play-O-Matic,"
represented by a colorful jukebox. (Nearly every item in
Professor Sandler's house has "O-Matic" appended to it —
Cupboard-O-Matic, Toast-O-Matic, and so on.) The Nixon-Eisenhower
bulletin board and the town's gratitude for the
"blessing" of atomic power are fitting, and the general who
commands the nearby Army base is naturally anti-communist
and, by logical extension, anti-alien.

But there's one aspect of *LGOP2* that's definitely *not*
lifted from that innocent era: sex. and plenty of it. It's not that
the sex scenes are sprung on you without warning: one look
at the title and the box art should let you know that there's going
to some naughtiness here. And most players won't consider
this stuff to be remotely pornographic. Though you're fully
aware that the "act" is taking place, we've all seen a lot more
graphic stuff on soap operas and prime time TV.

<figure class="float-right">
<img src="/public/img/articles/pcent-review-lgop2/lgop2-screen-shot-5.jpg" alt="A screen shot of a gas station attendant from LGOP2">
<figcaption><em>Thoughtful attendants like Doe keep Zeke's service
station in business.</em></figcaption>
</figure>

The problem is that the sex doesn't really fit the setting of the
game — it's been ladled on top of the plot like so much gravy,
obscuring the game's stronger elements. As Zeke, you'll have
"trysts" with several women, but your romancing doesn't
advance the plot or gain you any valuable items.

And your sexual "adventures" as Lydia are even more
absurd because they're completely out of character. She
won't kiss her true love Zeke, but with a slew of other fellows
she's like a rabbit in heat, giving herself up at the drop of a
hat (or feather, in the case of the stereotyped Indian who stands
guard outside the reservation on the edge of town). It could
be argued that limiting the ribald escapades to Zeke would
have been somewhat sexist, but it's best to keep a straight face
when you're spoofing the fab fifties, even if it means you're
not politically correct for the nineties.

As noted, *LGOP2* has several features that are clever and
appreciated. The game is structured so you can't die or box
yourself into a corner, so you won't find yourself replaying a
large chunk of the game to retrieve an object or perform an
action you overlooked. (This feature, however, makes the 20
save-game slots unnecessary; three slots — one for each character —
would have been sufficient).

For players without sound cards, Infocom has included the
"LifeSize Sound Enhancer," which lets you hear the digitized
speech accompanying all written dialogue through a
printer port (the game supports similar devices such as the
Covox Speech Thing and the Disney Sound Source). The
cartoonlike VGA graphics are more than adequate for the
lighthearted nature of the game, and unlike some graphic adventures
the screen redraws are surprisingly fast. Anyone who
has played a recent graphic adventure will have the point-and-click
interface down pat in a matter of seconds.

<figure class="float-left">
<img src="/public/img/articles/pcent-review-lgop2/lgop2-screen-shot-6.jpg" alt="A screen shot of Planet X from LGOP2">
<figcaption><em>You get your first glimpse of Planet X
through Professor Sandler's telescope</em></figcaption>
</figure>

But unless you're a total greenhorn, you won't get a
chance to really relish these features: *LGOP2* is a very short
game. It might seem as though there's a lot to explore in town,
but you'll probably find everything you need on your
second pass. After solving only a couple of moderately challenging
puzzles on Earth, you head for Planet X (three or four
screens), then Phobos (another four or five screens). There's a
map you can grab to help guide you, but Atom City is so small
that you can easily get by without it.

Why is a 15-meg game so lacking in scenery and difficulty?
Much of that disk space is undoubtedly taken up by the
digitized speech, but sadly the spoken dialogue which accompanies
the static closeups of each character adds little or
no excitement to the game. I would gladly trade all that
speech for more problems to solve and locales to visit, and I
suspect that most players will feel the same way.

If Activision can incorporate the challenge of the old
Infocom games into the Leather Goddesses 2 engine, the result
could be a game that novices and veterans alike can fully
enjoy. We'll just have to wait and see.
