Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender

I love this game. I played it a LOT back in 1994-95 after getting it as part of a Microprose collection with our new Gateway2000. It has always stuck with me, and it holds up amazingly well. I've told my girlfriend about it for years and now it is finally here! It's fun. It's very rewarding. It unfolds the world wonderfully well and makes you want to discover each new screen with excitement. It's one of the few adventure games that it's FUN to die in, because it doesn't really set you back at all and they are varied and graphic. Perverse with a strong sense of female-empowerment. Done with a chauvinistic attitude that it is aware of and criticizes. This is one of my HIGHEST recommendations on this site (along with titles like Torment, The Longest Journey, Interstate '76.)

Can't say how much I love this game. 1st time play thru with no nostalgia rose colored lenses. It really is that good. Pros: excellent origianal soundtrack. It reminds me of old time silent movies where the organist sat at the front and played during the movie, changing tempos etc to the screen action. Only think much better fully realized music, sometimes just a throbbing synth bass to simulate tense scary situations to full blown synth orchestra. Love it. The graphic art is outstanding. Fully realized landscapes and figures, animals and actions. The best bit of the game is the dying animations (with no penalty, you just auto reload at the same scene to try again). The text tool tips can be hilarious as you look and explore or try different combos. You can tell the devs spent a ton of time on trying to cover any situation a player may try. The story is pure camp fun and the action is pure adventure. Cons: No quick travel makes exploration a tad tedious at times. The immense amount of actions and inventory combinations make it also tedious and confusing as to what you are supposed to do. No journal to track your actions and no hints of what you are supposed to be doing next. If you miss a text conversation thats too bad so sad. Resolution is pretty vague and items are hard to see on the landscape which means you spend an inordinate amount of time just clicking on things to see if they are items/actionable hotspots etc. that is pretty normal in adventure games but this game its more or less just trying to identify what that dark colored blob may be. Add in that some landscape items are clearly drawn and stand along and just begging to be clicked but end up being just nothing.. adds another layer of tedium gameplay. However many cons I list the charm and comedy of the game is pure adventure treasure. Its very easy to get immersed in this psuedo 1950s land of the 50 ft woman island of dr mourea space camp odyessy.

Quite enjoyed this and the other Microprose adventure I played way back when (Return of the Phantom). It's a fun, solid adventure with occasional overly-frustrating bits... but it really only depends on whether you get stuck or not! Certainly don't want to criticise a game for difficulty in this day and age where they take about as long to complete as a Christopher Nolan film! I think on balance this is quite a short and easy adventure, just like its stablemate. The third Microprose adventure, Dragonsphere is free on gog. Haven't played that yet, but it might be worth taking that for a spin first. If you want more when you're done with those two, take a look at Return of the Phantom. Might be difficult to track down but I really enjoyed it apart from a most objectionable maze section.

Remember that you can speed-up the game by pressing alt + F12