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Review
Trev's
Excellent Adventure
(a.k.a. Trev
to the Rescue, a.k.a. Problem Solving and Logical
Thinking)
| Developer: |
Powervision |
| Publisher: |
Eureka Multimedia |
| Genre: |
Adventure |
| Release
Date: |
2001 |
| Platform: |
 |
Review by Alexander Tait
April 22, 2004 |
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 I enjoy discovering and
tracking down adventure games that for various reasons are not
known to the adventure game community at large. Interestingly,
one day at work a colleague who’s room I was using had this
game sitting on their desk. She had bought it wondering if it had
potential for use in speech therapy rehabilitation of people who
have suffered a stroke. I immediately recognized the game as an adventure
game and, of course, had to get a copy of it. Fortunately for me,
she had bought it through the book club at work so I was able to
get a copy.
 Though the outside DVD-style
case is labeled Problem Solving and Logical Thinking and installs
to a directory of the same name, the
game menu lists both Problem Solving and Logical Thinking and Trev’s
Excellent Adventure, and the disk itself is called Trev
to the Rescue! Such a schizophrenic situation usually bodes very poorly for the
professionalism and stability of the game. It all smacks of hasty
work in preparation. I wonder if the game was licensed to Eureka
Multimedia by a private developer. This may explain the uncertainty
with nomenclature.
 Trev’s Excellent Adventure is yet another Australian game
featuring photographs and FMV, in this case almost a pure blend of
The Sydney Mystery and Xiama. Another tradition it brings with it
is woeful voice acting, poorer even than that found in internationally
recognized Australian soap operas like Neighbours and Home
and Away.
I’m sure that other countries have their fair share of bad
actors but Australian TV (and now the computer game industry) seems
to thrive on unbelievably hammy performances…and people keep
watching! Compounding the kitschy acting is the fact that the majority
of the voices are produced by one person! Bring your sense of humor
and you’ll howl with delight when you hear the teenager speaking
with a voice of a much older man. Add to this poor diction without
subtitles and it’s a case of “Welcome to B-grade Land”!
And don’t start me on the puerile, pathetic dialog… On
the positive side, the best acting comes from the narrator/voice-over
actor and this is quite adequate. Most items found in the game are
accompanied by a short description or anecdote by the narrator.
 Being made in Australia,
it’s refreshing to see a difference
in locale to most adventure games, especially those using FMV. Suburbia
is immediately recognizable to any Australian suburbanite. Unfortunately,
both still photographs and movies were created in far less than 800x600
resolution so images are grainy and don’t do justice what they
depict, particularly the videos. Prepare yourself to become quite
familiar with the videos as they are replayed every time you return
to a new area although, according to the readme, in the options panel
you can elect that it only plays two seconds of the cutscene if it
is a replay. There are infrequent “special effects” (child-like
blobs of color haphazardly stuck on the image) that younger players
may overlook but I found these further degraded the quality of the
production.
 Both Australians and non-Australians
will enjoy the decidedly unique Aussie slang (“postie” for mailman and “skidley” for
helmet) as well as the laconic, larrikin humor. Australians are known
for dry humor and this is apparent in the good-natured insults that
are exchanged throughout the game. Older children and young teens
will probably appreciate the isolated “gross-out” jokes
more than adults will but, after all, this is a game for children.
As such, it will only take 3-4 hours for adults to finish.
Adults should be troubled
only seldom in this linear, inventory-based game but in case of
difficulty, the makers included a document of
hints and a walkthrough. This is a great idea for any game targeting
children so that parents can help them. Even better than this are
a couple of features for which the game really deserves a mention.
To be found in the game is a companion who provides help when asked.
Especially good is that the hints are timed similar to the way they
were in Torin’s Passage. Once hints have been accessed, players
must wait for “Bertie” to change back from red to yellow
to green before they can receive another hint. At the end of the
game the player is given a rating of their success based on the frequency
with which they used Bertie. The other excellent design of the game
is that the puzzles accommodate to failure. After a few attempts,
the game offers hints or makes the puzzle easier. This is a notable
feature in the mazes (yes, plural), one of which requires clicking
right or left while moving along an “on rails” bike track
while riding a mountain bike. The readme states that some of the
puzzles randomize on each play.
 Sound effects are nothing
to write home about and are usually drowned out by what can only
be described as God-awful elevator music. A
theme song plays about three times during the game (more if you have
to reply sections) which seems to have taken inspiration from Queen’s
Flash Gordon theme, Flash. Only, the composer decided Queen’s
song wasn’t camp enough and went all out for Trev to the
Rescue.
The interface is another
point of note. It is intuitive, requiring little previous computer
experience to play, save, and load. The
game has both a manual and automatic save, offering further security
against losing your game in the event of a crash. I can say, happily,
that this game played error-free from start to end. The only problem
I had was a failure to detect the CD-ROM unless it was in my E: drive.
Ignoring the error because the game had been installed to the D:
drive, the game played flawlessly. The game deserves kudos for a
clear error message also. The detailed readme accompanying the game
was excellent, outlining how to play, troubleshooting, and even identifying
the educational qualities (comprehension, logic, puzzle solving,
memory) of Trev’s Excellent Adventure. The in-game interface
features icons for “look”, “talk”, “get/use”,
and an icon for each inventory item. It was a shame that there wasn’t
a close-up feature to examine items or at the least text labels so
you knew what was in the inventory. Movement is through the use of
onscreen arrows that are not always explicitly clear. A downward-pointing
arrow meant on some occasions, look down, but on others, move back.
Sometimes a right-turn arrow meant move right and at other times,
turn right 90 degrees.
 In Trev’s Excellent Adventure, you are the eponymous Trev
(Trevor) whose brother Daniel has eaten some bad berries and is very
sick. Your father has gone insane after creating a successful adventure
game. As a result, he has been demonstrating some very unusual behavior
that has necessitated the decision by the ambulance service to go
nowhere near Trev’s house! While Trev’s mother (in what
ought to be a Golden Raspberry winning performance) seemingly unconcerned
tries to find a cure in a plant book, Trev is left with the daunting
task of saving his brother’s life. Logic takes a long trip
in this game where people have apparently never heard of a doctor.
Other bizarre events include Trev’s cousin losing his watch
in a 3x3 sandbox when it flies off while practicing his golf swing!
And it was never explained just why Trev’s dog tries to attack
him when he goes around the back of his house!
Don’t be put off
by the presence of action sequences. These are relatively simple
and should not be viewed as being cut from
the same cloth as action sequences in Evidence: The Last Resort,
Dogday, or even those in The Lost Files of Sherlock
Holmes: Case of the Rose Tattoo. The basketball game was a lot of fun and requires
strategy more than physical skill or dexterity.
 I noted that many of the surnames in the credits were shared so
I suspect this was a small, family production and it is made with
families in mind. Pretty much anybody can play this and find little
to offend sensibilities (provided they can look beyond the acting
and production values). There are more lows than highs in this game,
but it does feature some creditable game design features that other
adventures ought to include. This game will be of most interest to
people who rue the loss of FMV adventures and for adventure game
completists. In my opinion, the game rates a C-, below average but
still possessing some merits. More information about the game is
available at www.eurekamultimedia.com.au.
Final Grade: C-
System Requirements:
- Pentium 120
- Win 9X
- SVGA Videocard
- 16 MB RAM
- 2X CD-ROM
- 20 MB hard drive space
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