DreamWeb

You are nobody, a bartender trying to live your insignificant little life. Then at some point, you start having intense nightmares about murders and despair... and an enormous mass of energy created by human thoughts and dreams, called [insert game title here]. Finally, when you're on the verge of losing your mind, you are contacted by some mysterious hooded figures, who order you to kill seven people.

Along with Syndicate and Rise of the Dragon, DreamWeb was one of the games which introduced me to a world of gritty cyberpunk - the thing which I lust and long for even now. Back in early nineties no one apparently thought that future computers would be contained in sexy aesthetic white or aluminum cases (like, let's say, iMacs). Nah, everything is dark, dirty steel. No user friendly GUI's, just lines and lines of yellowish text. What about the outside world? Nice futuristic glass skyscrapers over clean streets with hover cars? Nuh-uh, black, steel towers over filth and gutters. In the middle of all that - you having a crammy apartment (shelter), pretending it's not a prison. God, I love this...

The game is easily recognizable by its peculiar interface: the location you are currently in is shown from a top-down perspective, taking only a relatively small portion of the screen. In the bottom left corner there's a zoom window, which follows the cursor and shows the (un)interesting objects. Thank God for that, because it effectively reduces the amount of anger you might build up during the the hunt for pixel-sized items. Speaking of the interesting objects, the inventory screen might be a little bothersome to navigate (mostly because of the three sections you have to click your way through), but I guess it couldn't have been helped, since that was the only way of showing a 36-slot inventory in the era of low resolution. Oh, and you can pick up almost everything - any piece of junk or garbage can be placed in your inventory, even if it's not used for anything (which is mostly the case). About one fifth of the screen is taken up by the image of the Ryan the protagonist, which remains the same throughout the game, except for the sunglasses which you might wear. There's a lot of reading - an obvious thing, since it's an adventure game. The CD versions feature the dialogues read by actors, but in exchange, some scenes got censored (have you ever had sex with your underwear still on?).

There is gore. No gallons of blood, but still. The murders are very graphic and detailed. Curiously enough, I've never felt any satisfaction upon committing them, although shooting people in video games is and has always been one the most stress-relieving activities in my life. Sometimes you, the player, truly feel guilty about what you have just done. Take a look at the last screenshot below - not too many games give you that king of thing... The oddest thing is, Ryan never actually seemed to share my guilt, he just went on with his crusade, never once raising any questions. At one point I started to suspect that he might actually be insane, the whole thing, the DreamWeb, being the product of his deranged imagination. But you know what? I was wrong. The DreamWeb was indeed true and that is the insane thing about it. The crazy world, with Ryan being just a puppet, doing what he was told, or programmed.

Save the best for last - the soundtrack. While the Amiga version features music which is decent enough, the PC soundtrack was just superb for its time (even today it stands strong). Composed by Matt Seldon and Tony Dillon (I don't have a slightest idea who there guys are ;-P), it contains steady, very emotional tracks, more than fitting for the game's dark environments.

So there you have it - one of the most important titles of the old times. A piece of a long-forgotten art of making adventure games. I urge you to check it out.