Countdown

Play with a walkthrough. Save (very) often. The puzzles are mostly logical and serve the story, but you will still die a lot. I just finished playing. My strategy was to go to a new room, save, play it until I thought I was done, check the walkthrough then save, move on to the next location in the walkthrough. The entire game is timed and if you take too long, you fail right at the end. So follow the walkthrough. The story seemed far fetched when I played this 30 years ago. It was actually scarily prophetic.

Much more enjoyable than Amazon : Guardians of Eden, even though it predates it by a couple of years. All fairly playable, although I did use a walkthrough to keep it moving along, and it has a couple of awful pixel-punching puzzles which were par for the time. I would have given it 4 or 5 stars if it were not for the fact that you can run out of time playing the overall game (game over) and also you can run out of cash (also game over). Whoever thought this type of mechanic was a good idea needs sending to the Sanctuary and giving a good thrashing. I haven't finished the game because I ran out of cash. I think it was because I gave too large a bribe very early on, so I'm not going all the way back there. To not provide some recourse to get more cash (and I wouldn't mind, say, having to wait a day to build up some cash) is just unforgivable, even by the standards of the day.

Countdown is one of the adventures that shocked me the most at the time, but at the time was 30 years ago. Chris Jones, from the Tex Murphy games, and Brent Erickson, who later released that oddball called Noctropolis (all of them featured in gog) released a very campy take on the pulpiest spy novels of the 70s and 80s, starting in an asylum and making you look at everything to trigger flashbacks that explain the backstory. The puzzles are mostly based on moving something to get a key, there are some annoying "proximity" puzzles, some interesting stealth parts, a way more interesting set of conversational puzzles (reminding a bit of the japanese visual novels) and, for the time, really cool digitalised video and audio. No music, not much of a description, plenty of dead ends and not only timed puzzles but a timed game. The best thing about this game may be the sense of humour it never stops having, and that makes it way more successful than their Amazon game. Still, it is a game that at the time you forgave its problems (the movement, the interface, the timed puzzles, the glitches) because it offered something that was not in any other adventure (a spy adventure!). And yet it is one of the few spy narrative games around. But it is campy, it is pulpy, and it is rough. I still love it because of how happy it made me when I beat it for the first time but that does not change what it is: an adventure game below the average quality at the time (Sierra, Coktel or Lucas were doing better games - even Mean Streets from the same authors is a much better game overall and feels better). If you are curious, play it with a walkthrough.

I remember this game fondly because at the time the graphics were awesome and it had a rocking intro. Also the flashbacks are shown in what I would call a precursor to FMV, animated but close to being photo realistic. Pretty well done for 1990. The other reviewers pretty much summed up this game nicely and precisely, so instead of a full-blown review I would like to offer a helpful hint.... ****Running out of money? When you are in the sanctuary and you have the safe open, how many time(s) did you hit get money? :) :)