Questprobe Featuring: The Hulk

Questprobe Featuring The Hulk is a text quest with graphics from the Questprobe trilogy created by Scott Adams, which stands out from other games in the genre, both in themes and in game mechanics.

The game is based on the Marvel comic book series about one of its first “antiheroes" - the Hulk, whose debut number was released in 1962. For those unfamiliar with comics, readers will explain (very briefly) who the Hulk is and how it appeared. Physicist Bruce Banner, who worked for the army, was at a test site, where they were preparing for the explosion of a gamma bomb. Noticing that a teenager was accidentally in the test zone (Rick Jones, Hulk's future best friend), he rushed to save him and managed to push him into the bunker, but he did not manage to hide before the explosion. Bruce survived, but received a large dose of radiation, which led to a strange effect: from now on, every time he experiences stress, fear, severe pain against his desire, he turns into a giant green-skinned human-like monster named Hulk, whose actions can not be controlled, since the latter has no control self. Intellect Hulk is close to the level of development of a two-year-old child; he always talks about himself in the third person and uses only the infinitive from the forms of the verb. At the same time, the Hulk is characterized by incredible physical strength (capable of lifting hundreds of tons) and endurance, its strength increases in proportion to the increase in anger, which makes it virtually invincible and indestructible; also the Hulk can jump enormous distances in height and length and can clap its hands with such force that it can destroy any structure. After its appearance, this creature was declared a threat to national security, and hunting began for it, which led to the formation of an aggressive attitude towards the majority of humanity in Hulk.

This game is the first part of the trilogy. The ultimate goal of this quest, if you can call it that, is to collect as many bonuses in the form of gems as possible in order to complete it with the best score. After reading these words, you can decide that this is not an IF, but an arcade platformer, but this is not so: more precisely, all sorts of action-actions of an arcade nature are implied here, but neither visually nor technically happen: instead of this you have to give the commands associated with them by entering the appropriate words from the keyboard.

The plot itself, admittedly, is not particularly designed and difficult to understand - but it should be so, these are Marvel comics! The game begins with Banner tied to a chair with ropes (apparently, after all, someone could catch the Hulk). Yes - it’s Bruce, not the Hulk: in the course of the game, according to the plot, you have to take the form of a green giant more than once, but more than once to return to your original nature, and to solve different puzzles you will need both Banner’s ingenious mind and fantastic physical abilities Hulk; and all this - in IF format with graphics: at least extremely unusual. The ultimate goal is to find a certain Bio-Treasure, which is required by the Supreme Examiner (which will appear in subsequent games of the series). But this is unlikely to interest even fans of comics - but the fact that there was a place for other wonderful characters such as Ant-Man or the magician Doctor Strange, acting as NPCs, will certainly please.

Texts are usually medium or short, but a large part of the screen is occupied by a well-drawn picture in CGA graphics, often just reminiscent of comics of the 1960s, moreover, including style and surroundings (locations in the form of mysterious domes, giant ants, and so on - here there will be many interesting things). Commands are very simple and consist of action verbs, nouns (rarely) or their connectives; the essence is reduced mainly to moving (by the first letters of the names of the cardinal points) or raising objects, to get precious stones use the “Get Gem” command, to view the inventory - “I”, to view the points gained - “Score”. The game has a decent number of dangers that can - unlike the comic book world - instantly kill a hero if he makes a mistake, so it is highly advisable to save often, since four whole slots are allotted for this. However, in the event of death, he finds himself in a certain Limbe, from which he can leave and continue his adventure, returning to one of the screens before the one on which death befell him. The level of difficulty and, most importantly, the variety of puzzles are quite able to puzzle even experienced players.

In general, about the game we can say this: extremely original (the subsequent parts largely copied the gameplay of this, therefore less interesting) for the text quest, it is truly amazing for all fans of comics in general and the Hulk in particular, even for those who by default does not like text games; but for a wide audience, perhaps, it may seem strange.