Circuit's Edge

Circuit's Edge is at one time almost a cult adventure-RPG from Westwood, oriented, as even indicated on its cover, exclusively to adult players. Based on the novel by George Alec Effinger “When Gravity Fails” (which, most likely, was not translated into Russian).

The action takes place in, apparently, not such a distant future, on Earth, but in a somewhat unexpected place - in Morocco, in a city called Budayeen, which is a completely unique alloy of the atmosphere of the Arab East, Tangier of the first half of the 20th century (this city since 1912 until 1956 it was an international zone and earned itself a bad reputation), New Orleans and the cyberpunk cities of the future. Perhaps there has never been another such world in terms of uniqueness in computer games.

Your hero is a certain Marid, a former courier and partly a detective, and now unemployed, looking for this very job, wandering the streets of the city’s quarters, which can be fully called the “city bottom”. He will find this work - it will be necessary to investigate the murder - and the game will actually turn out to be relatively linear (in any case, you should not expect a lot of endings and storylines), and even with a certain time limit (the interface has a kind of clock that will remind you that, among other things, you have the main task).

What are the “other things” here? The fact of the matter is that a lot, a lot, and it is in them that the "maturity" of the game is manifested. You wander through the terrible cyberpunk city of the future, where this very cyberpunk is only the main, but not the only element that forms its terrible atmosphere, and where there was a place for all the most vile human vices. Yes, there are sinister corporations and nanochips implanted in people, there are mutants, but there are also sorcerers, and gangs of ordinary thugs, punks and drug addicts, drug addiction bars and brothels, including for people with "non-traditional orientation". And if you want to drink, take a dose of the drug or, say, stay in the company of prostitutes, then there will be no problems with this, playing the role of the “good guy” is by no means necessary. Moreover, we repeat, despite the real linearity, the game world seems simply huge and is available for research in its entirety.

First-person view of the game, but the main part of the game screen will be occupied by text messages and an extensive game interface. There are riddles in the game, sometimes quite complicated, as well as dialogs - you should immediately prepare for the fact that you will have to read quite a lot, as well as for the fact that among your interlocutors there will sometimes be the most incredible personalities (as well as topics for conversation) may be the most shocking).

The hero also has a certain set of characteristics, and the way to increase them in the game is very unusual: you can buy (for money earned one way or another) or get nanochips in another way that are responsible for improving an indicator (namely, for improvement - without a specific increase by units), and implant them yourself. Finally, in the game sometimes you have to fight with all kinds of enemies, therefore there is a mini-fighting game mode - also with a first-person view and without “arcade visualization”, where you will need to give your hero commands for delivering certain blows.

The game is made in EGA-graphics and can be called quite beautiful for its time, although only portraits of the NPCs you talk to or fight with are really great here - the interiors of the rooms and other things are presented in the form of small and rather blurry pictures. Summing up the game as a whole is quite difficult: on the one hand, in a sense it is really a masterpiece, because it offers the player a truly unique game world, demonstrated “without cuts”, and a rather interesting story, on the other - in some moments, the authors nevertheless, in my opinion, have gone too far in their “free” approach. One way or another, let everyone make the final conclusions themselves; the main thing - in no case do not give this game to children.