Virtual OS/2 International Consumer Education

November 1998

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Hopkins FBI

By: Rob Burton - rhb@accessv.com


My son likes Hopkins FBI. The animated cartoon characters and richly-drawn backgrounds appeal to him. But this is not a game for seven-year-olds. The quirky, adult humour and the naked women and blood, guts and gore raise it above the level of what I'm willing to let my boy see.


[Dead pilot after the bank robbers get away. Hopkins FBI presents strong motivation to track down the killers and bring them to justice.]


[Closeup view showing the graphic nature (albeit censored) of the images]

But if you need something for more "sophisticated" (or possibly just jaded) teen-aged or even adult tastes, Hopkins FBI may be just the ticket. It's a "detection" game. You must sweep your mouse pointer across the screens, looking for clues, then right-mouse click to enable the correct treatment ("go", "use", "take", "read", "move", etc.) on each object found. You also have to "speak" (from a set list of selections) to the people you encounter to gain more clues.

INSTALLATION

I've never seen an easier game to install. You literally drag the Hopkins folder from the CD to the drive location of your choice and it's done. Then click on the Hopkins icon and go. If you want its window to approximate your screen size, make sure you're running in 640 by 480 mode. You can use any colour depth you're comfortable with. If you run at higher resolutions, you will see Hopkins in a window.

GAME PLAY

A tough-talking FBI agent, Hopkins is your surrogate alter ego. A terrorist survives his electrocution for detonating an atomic bomb in Atlanta and escapes. You, as Hopkins, FBI, are on the case, and the chase leads you high and low. Can you nab the fiend and return him to justice? It depends. The game makers have a bit of the fiend in them, too, and it's not easy to follow the trail.

If, like me, you find yourself stumped, a kind soul has posted a "walk-through" on the web at http://www.iaehv.nl/users/vangompe/gamesidx/f/fbi.htm and I couldn't finish the game without it.

The game features imaginatively conceived twists and turns. I especially enjoyed the way the game depicted going to Heaven.


[Hopkins "zooms" up a warp-like tunnel to get to Heaven. There are no Pearly Gates, however. Only an elaborate waiting room and an inability by the St. Peter stand-in to find his file.]

There are also two games within the game. When Hopkins visits his office in the FBI building he can let you play a kind of paddle-ball game. There's also a Wolfenstein-like game later on (according to the walk-through), although I never got there.

FIT & FINISH

If you like small quibbles, I have a couple for your amusement. When you "converse" with another character, you choose among lines of dialog to offer the character, then your "voice" says what you chose and the character responds in kind. Expect a few surprises.

When I had Hopkins "search" the body of a dead female hostage, he reported, "I found nothing in his pockets." I worried about Hopkins powers of perception until his girlfriend Samantha showed up later in the game. Clearly he can judge women when it matters. He never referred to Samantha as a "he".

When I clicked on "Did you find my file?", the game played, "Who are you?" I guess I clicked on the wrong answer. When I chose, "You are wrong, I'm alive," the game played, "You are joking." I was told the game originated in the DOS universe, in the French world. Perhaps it lost something in the translation at this particular point. I was unable to find many such nits to pick, I should note.

In another stage of the game, you can omit to take a vital clue to the crime lab because if you telephone the crime lab to ask about it, they'll give you the report even if you never took it there. Now that's efficient.

Speaking of efficiency, most actions you might tell Hopkins to do with your mouse take from 10 to 20 seconds for Hopkins to perform. If you want him to "search" a cabinet, he'll walk over to it, he'll squat down, his arms will move a bit, he'll stand up, and he'll report what he's found. You'll enjoy it more if you play the game when you're not rushed for time.

If time does not permit you to finish a game, you can save your game state. This also permits you to experiment with tactics that may lead you up a deadend. By restoring your game play to the status before you tried an unrewarding gambit, you can keep playing without starting over.


Hopkins FBI: Available for $49.95 (plus $7 shipping) from Polyex - http://www.polyex.com/hopkins.html via online secure ordering in the U.S. or from Mensys - http://www.mensys.nl/ in Europe.

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