Part Myst and part Grolier's Encyclopedia, this game is more fun and more informative than either. Based on the critically acclaimed television series with host James Burke, Connections is an intuitive exploration game accompanied by mini-documentaries and movies about the development of various inventions and items you find along your way. Once you find a significant item, you can explore, solve mind puzzles, learn, and make a connection to another apparently disparate item. You can relate carbon paper to an oscilliscope by way of a match.
Fascinating content aside, this is technically the best designed CD-ROM I've seen. The live video of characters, which meld seamlessly and beautifully into the high-definition computer-generated environments, and the mini-movies are high-res, high in sound quailty, and are never jerky. With dozens of inits and extensions loaded into my computer, the game has never crashed once-a first for any multimedia title I've ever played.
Sprinkled throughout the exploration adventure are intuitive brain puzzles to engage your mind, but they don't require hours to deduce, which keeps your journey moving at a steady pace and leaves potential boredom by the wayside. Online hints are always available and doled out piecemeal to give you an opportunity to try it yourself. Even when they give you the answer, you still have to perform the tasks yourself.
Connections is truly fun, truly interactive, and truly multimedia, with the added bonus of learning lots of cool trivia along the way. Who knows, it may change the way you see the world, and you'll be a more creative person for it.
Wilson Hardcastle is a technical marvel who works at BookPage.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.