Orion Burger

I won't waste any time waffling, and I'll give you the gist of the Orion Burger storyline by quoting pretty much directly from the press release - it does a succint enough job, so why try fixing what ain't broke?

"Alien reps from the lntergalactic Orion Burger Corporation are scouring the universe, ready to make mincemeat of any unintelligent life forms they stumble upon. Only the clever races survive, and you - playing a geezer called Wilbur - are the guinea pig for the whole of humankind.

You will have to endure a bizarre battery of puzzles that will scrutinise aspects of your intelligence. You will be expected to learn an alien language. Your neuro-synaptic bandwidth will be tested - in other words, can you work out how to conduct 100,000 volts of electricity with your head? And more, much more. But fear not. If you fail these testsyou will be spared from death only to return to the gaming arena in a Groundhog Day scenario, where you'll relive your experiences... with any new skills you've picked up going back with you, opening the game up yet further."

End of copycat bit...

So there's the gist. You start the game off on Earth, where there's a whole point-and-click adventure going on already. Then the aliens zap you off to a weird and wonderful location, where you're given specific problems to solve: an intelligence test, in other words.

Pass or fail and you get sent back to earth, armed with the new skills your character picked up. On and on. Get zapped up to aliensville. On and on. Back to earth. On and on. Aliensville, earth, aliensville, earth. And so forth.

Apparently Orion Burger does what games such as Lure Of The Temptress attempted to do, insofar as shit happens even if you're not actually around to witness it. (Or events aren't purely 'location driven', if you want it worded poncily.) For instance, there's a bank robbery occuring in the Earth part of the game which happens every day in the same location and at the same time (Groundhog Day, don't forget). The lirst time you play, you may well be in one of the other hundred or so locations, and will therefore miss it completely. When you do eventually find out about it,(through a newspaper story or something), you can make sure that you are there the next time.

From the blurb I read about Orion Burger, it really does sound as if the game could be onto a winning formula - the designers have gone (they say) to great lengths to avoid any 'frustrations' on the part of the player. You know those adventures where you have to plough through nine zillion locations to collect 'the chocolate bar' you forgot to get earlier? Well, apparently that sort of stuff simply doesn't happen. Oh, and here's something to bear in mind: the writer of Orion Burger wrote the scripts for oodles of episodes of Star Trek: Next Generation. (Exactly which ones I can't tell you, but it augers well, surely. Mind you, he also wrote the scripts for a large number of episodes of Charlie's Angels, which sort of evens things out a bit.)

The PC Blueprint 'competition'...

On the preview cd I was given - along with all the usual biog stuff on the designers and programmers - there was a tiny playable portion of the game itself. It's one of the later intelligence tests, in which the Aliens have shrunk you to femto-scopic proportions and hurled you into a gerbil cage. This wee part of the game is only three screens big, and you only have three items in your inventory, so you'd think the objective - to escape from the cage -would be a doddle. But no. It's a nightmare. Chris (Features Ed) and I tried everything we could think of until our brains exploded, and got nowhere.

So: reckon you're hard enough to get further? Then study the screens in question, and have a squiz at what we tried. Did we miss anything?

If you think you've sussed it, send your solution to "You Thick Couple Of Tossers Compo" at the usual PC address. Or e-mail it. The sender of the first correct solution will win my very own tv remote control unit. "That's a shit prize" you may be thinking. And on the surface of things I agree, but look at it this way... while you're in possession of my zapper, every time I want to change channel or turn the volume up or down, I'll have to bloody get up and do it manually. (You bastards! Send it back!) (They haven't won it yet - Ed.)

Things we've already tried...

Using the hamster-wheel obviously powers the magnet and opens the door, but step off the wheel and the door doses. (Slippery kibble will not allow you to slide to the door before it shuts.) The tights don't seem to interact with anything. Ditto the peanuts, carrot pieces, apple core and bottle top, but maybe you know better. You can shoot the water dish: water then pours from it and goes down the hole, but why, or what for, sod knows. Using the gun on the ice releases the grasshoppers, which then leap about all over the shop (they serve to muck up the Robo Rodents' aim momentarily -seemingly giving you time to do something else, but quite what we're not sure). You can't reach the magnet or the generator (or we don't think you can). You can release the Robo Rodents by either 'using' the wood chippings or by zapping (the wood chippings catch fire in the case of the latter). And, er, that's about it. Good luck!