Normality

A review by Michael Santovec for KEGS (Komputer Enthusiasts of Greater Seattle) - March 1997

Why Be Normal?

In the brooding pit of boredom that is the city of Neutropolis, everyone, or nearly everyone, is normal. Normality isn't just an option, it is enforced by the Norm Troopers. From their headquarters at the Ordinary Outpost, the Norm Troopers control the city. And don't even think about turning your TV off. For that matter, don't even think. The Norm Troopers wouldn't like that. It wasn't always this way. About thirty years ago, Neutropolis was a radical free-thinking utopia. But something happened back then.

In Normality, a light-hearted adventure game from Interplay , you play Kent, one of the few citizens of Neutropolis with more than 3 living brain cells. This makes you anything but normal. As the game opens, you've just spent a week in the Blue Pen. Your crime: whistling a tune of your own composition. During your stay, you've been exposed to the normalizing influence of elevator music. Just before your release, someone slipped you note. From it, you find out that you are not alone. There are a few others like you.

Now, all you have to do is: escape from house arrest at your dingy apartment; learn about the shady history of Neutropolis; find the other subversives; prove your worth to "the cause" by two acts of subversion/terrorism (get a rock video aired on TV and paint a drab public sculpture bright yellow); rescue a political prisoner or two; destroy the control that the Norm Troopers have on the city and restore Neutropolis to it's former glory. Is that too much to ask?

This is a fun game that has Attitude with a capital "A". Kent has little respect for authority, but knows how to talk to the "norms" with a superficially conformist tone. Along the way you need to get a job, deal with a TV executive, even impersonate a Norm Trooper, all without losing your slightly warped perspective on life.

This is a game of easy-to-moderate difficulty. You needn't worry about saving the game frequently. You can't die, and there are no dead-ends in the game. Most of the objects that you will need to pick up are in the same general location that they are used. But some objects are found in other locations, and you will need to go back and forth between several locations. If you miss a needed object, there is always a way to get back to it. You won't find yourself near the end of the game and need to restore back to the middle and replay the game in order to do something important that you missed. There is one main path through the game, with an optional side trip or two. Several of the minor tasks can be accomplished more than one way. There are a number of red herrings in the game. Many seeming important objects have no significance and some tasks that you can perform have no relevance to completing the game. But they do keep you busy. And since Normality is anything but normal, many of the things you need to do are less than obvious. You won't need to take a lot of notes. You will receive a few codes along the way that are worth remembering. Creating maps as you explore the various locations is not critical. However, if you are easily disoriented, mapping the sewers would be useful.

There are several pages of hints in the booklet that comes with the game. If you are the self-sufficient type who wants no help, watch out for pages 10-12. The game instructions run right into the hints section. The first page of hints actually provides detailed instructions for accomplishing the first major task. For those new to adventure games, this will get you well on your way. Hints for the rest of the game are far briefer and more cryptic. At the Interplay web site are some more hints that cover about the first quarter of the game. A book, "Normality - The Official Strategy Guide" is available from Prima Publishing for $19.95.

But How Does It Look and Feel?


Most of the game is played from a first-person perspective using a Doom-like interface. The keyboard (or mouse) is used to move forward, backward, turn, look up or down, or even run. As you move forward or backward, the scene zooms around you. The 3-D look enhances the feel of the game in a few scenes and the ability look up, down or around is occasionally useful. But overall, this is a poor interface for this type of adventure game. As you move in, the zooming results in blocky graphics. To make out many of the signs, you need to be at just the right distance and just the right angle. As you open doors you may need to back up out of the way. You need to come at stairs at just the right direction, and you need to maneuver around furniture. While this can enhance the challenge of an action game, it's just a nuisance here. There is no chasing involved, and nothing that you do is time critical. A better interface for this game would have been either a first-person perspective like Myst or a third- person perspective like Torin's Passage. Both of those games, which are older than Normality and also a single CD-ROM, have better quality graphics and better overall look and feel.

When you accomplish a significant task, the game switches to a third-person perspective to play a short non-interactive animated sequence. The graphics for these are somewhat better than the main game. These animated sequences are also used for the opening credits and story background.

Working with people and objects in the game requires the mouse and optionally the keyboard. When you use the mouse to point to an object or person that you can interact with, a brief description pops on the screen. You can turn the descriptions off, in which case the mouse pointer gets a highlighted outline. Once you highlight a person or object, you can press a key to Examine, Talk to, Use or Pick up. An alternative to the keyboard is to use the mouse's right button. This brings up the Kent Voodoo Doll . Here your options are Examine, Talk to, Use, Pick up or Open. This shows some inconsistencies. The mouse has an Open function that the keyboard is missing. The keyboard Use key will often act as an Open function, but in a number of places the mouse and keyboard give different results. So if you get stuck, be sure to try both.

Kent will make comments as you try to work with objects. There are also conversations between Kent and the other characters. These can either be displayed as text, spoken, or both. I would recommend both. The spoken dialog adds to the enjoyment (Corey Feldman is the voice of Kent). However, you may miss some things if you don't also get the text. I did encounter a few brief sections where the spoken dialog was missing. There is also some lively background music that may drive you up a wall after a few hours. And there are the usual sound effects. The game's control panel lets you separately adjust the volume of each of the three sound sources.

But Will It Run on My Computer?

The stated requirements include: MS-DOS 5.0 or Windows 95, 486/66, 8 MB of RAM, double-speed CD-ROM, mouse, VGA or SVGA (with VESA drivers), and sound card compatible with: Sound Blaster (Pro, 16, AWE32), Microsoft Sound System, or Ensoniq Soundscape. I tested it on a system with Windows 95, 486/66, 16 MB of RAM, double- speed CD-ROM and a Reveal (Aztech Labs) sound card that can emulate either a Sound Blaster Pro or Microsoft Sound System card. The box says that for Windows 95 you should run in MS-DOS mode. The game booklet ignores that and provides installation instructions using the Windows 95 Autoplay feature, which runs the game within a DOS full screen window. I tested from both MS-DOS mode and within a Windows 95 DOS window. I didn't see any significant performance difference. If you have only 8 MB of RAM, you might need to run in MS-DOS mode. Being a DOS game, you need to configure the settings for the sound card (type, I/O address, IRQ and DMA). It won't use any Windows settings. The installation program will try to guess at the correct settings. In my case it was about two-thirds right. It guessed a Microsoft Sound System and 2 of the 3 settings correctly (wrong DMA). When I manually selected Sound Blaster Pro, it likewise got 2 of the 3 settings correct (wrong IRQ). By manually selecting the correct settings, I was able to play the game with either sound card type. The game played fairly well. Occasionally the keyboard response was sluggish, for no apparent reason. The game was solid with no crashes. There are no patches needed. I did run into one problem with the Autoplay feature. Under Windows 95, it will automatically load a menu when you insert the CD-ROM. This lets you install, uninstall, play, view the readme, or exit. However, frequently the menu came up blank. If I clicked in the correct spot, the menu worked, but I had to guess where to click. This appears to be a conflict with one or more other programs, including Microsoft Internet Explorer. If I ran Normality first after booting, the Autoplay menu displayed properly, otherwise it didn't. The game itself worked fine in all cases.

The stated hard disk requirements are confused. The box says 20 MB. The CD-ROM readme file says 7 MB. The installation program gives you a choice of small (15.5 MB), medium (21.8 MB) or large (57.5 MB) install. I found you should have at least 25 MB available for the small installation. The small installation placed 11.6 MB on the hard drive (the medium placed 17.4 MB, I didn't try the large). During game play, as you switch from one major location to another, the game creates a temporary map file on the hard drive, after deleting the prior one. The largest of these is about 11 MB. Saved games (you can have up to 100) take 11 KB each. If you are tight for disk space, there are a couple of things you can do. When you exit the game, the last map file is left on the hard drive. When you resume the game, any left over map files are immediately deleted by the NORMAL.BAT which controls the game. If you want to make that space available when you exit, add the line "if exist maps\*.das del maps\*.das" to the end of NORMAL.BAT. The installation program also places the 5.7 MB file LOGO.EXE on the hard drive. The sole function of this file is to display the Interplay logo during game start up. It runs as well from the CD-ROM as it does the hard drive and should have been left there. You can safely delete it from the hard drive. The game won't notice, and it starts a little quicker by skipping the logo.

Should I Play It or Let My Kids Play It?

The game is rated: Teen (Ages 13+), "Animated Violence, Use of Tobacco and Alcohol". No one dies in the game, but several characters are injured. There is massive property damage (what's one less shopping mall?). The only tobacco use that I noticed was some smoking sewer rats. The use of alcohol is apparent in a scene showing the aftereffects of a party (it's not a pretty sight). There is more than a little bathroom humor. There is some mild profanity and a few sexual innuendoes. The game is clearly aimed at the teen and young adult market, although older folks with a sense of humor will enjoy it. If you are a parent who is terrified that your teenagers might question authority, you won't want them anywhere near this game. Otherwise, let them at it (and you can play the game when they are out).

Overall, I found the game interesting and fun. The graphics are mediocre (they have not kept up with the competition). The user interface is adequate. The installation and setup could use some work. List price is $49.95. This is not a must play game, but I don't think you'll regret playing it.

And You Want Still More?

The CD-ROM includes three demos: Descent 2, Shattered Steel and Whiplash. The web site includes more information on Normality. Also, at the Interplay ftp site are several Normality freebies. (The ftp site is frequently full, so you may have trouble getting in). There are Kent screen savers for Windows 95 and Windows 3.1. There are also some Normality demos. These are not interactive demos, but rather several of the animated sequences. I don't recommend that you play these, as that would give away several problems that you need to solve. However, if you download the demo player you can use it later to replay the animations (GDV files) from the CD-ROM. Peeking at the animations can also be helpful if you get stuck. If the demo player doesn't recognize your sound card, you can copy the CONFIG.INI file from your Normal directory into the demo player's directory.

Have a Normal Day!