VETERAN EXPERIENCE
by Robert Street

Review: David Welbourn

As the "Veteran", a pro wrestler past his prime, you are a last-minute replacement in a World title championship match. You are too old and weak to have a hope of winning honestly. But you are "smarter", and plan to eliminate all your opponents before the match even begins. Not through murder, but you're quite willing to ruin their careers or disable them so they can't compete.

As a puzzle game, it's a nice snack. And it's reasonably well-coded. But you might be put off somewhat by the immorality of the PC.

Rating: ***

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Review: David Whyld

A game by a newcomer and one brave enough to enter it in a competition to boot. Well, well…

What's it about? You're the Veteran, a wrestler who seems to have gone to seed but is still determined to win a world wrestling tournament despite the slight disadvantage of all the other wrestlers being superior to him. How are you going to beat them then? Simple: you're going to cheat…

Strangely this was closer to an actual game than anything else in the Comp: there were puzzles to solve (albeit simple and straightforward ones), things to examine and NPCs to interact with. The writing was nothing special but then three hours isn't a long time to work on your prose so that's no problem.

The moral of the game seems to be a strange one: if you can't win fair 'n' square, cheat your ass off. I got the better of one opponent by beating him unconscious with a crowbar, another I burnt his face off with acid. I dealt with the other in a low-handed way as well and was left thinking afterwards that it might have been a better idea to have an option whereby you can defeat your enemies without having to maim them for life. It's also a bit farfetched that no one would have heard me braining some poor chap or throwing acid at someone else.

But at the end of the day, this wasn't bad at all. It's a long way from being good but as far as three hour comp games go by newcomers, it was certainly a worthy first effort.

4 out of 10