Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender

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Rex Nebular
and the Cosmic Gender Bender

Release date: 1992
Developer/Publisher: Micropose
Game language: English
Boxshots
Walkthrough german
Walkthrough english

A review by slydos 31st August 2002

Exactly 10 years ago Micropose published this point&click adventure game. It seems to be the answer to Sierra's successful Space Quest series, at least to the first 4 parts. Actually our hero, Rex Nebular, has similarities with Roger Wilco, but we can also detect affinities to Han Solo, Indiana Jones and Larry Laffer too. "Rex Nebular" actually reminds me most of the Psygnosis games "Innocent Until Caught" and "Guilty". These two similar games were published later and it seems, as if Rex Nebular would have served the inventors of Jack Ladd as model.

Story

"Rex Nebular" is an interstellar adventurer, who was hired by Colonel Stone, to procure a precious vase. Rex is not necessarily the most courageous one, but the promised money could finally convince him to start the search. With his spaceship "Slippery Pig" he comes near the planet Terra Androgena, which shouldn't actually exist at all. While he is still surprised by this fact, he is attacked by a large battle ship and finally forced to an emergency landing on the planet. Not only the attackers inside the battle ship are female - Rex finds out fast that the entire planet is controlled by women, who don't like the other sex and only let them stay alive for tests or reproduction purposes. Many years ago they triumphed in the war of the sexes over the men, who had withdrawn themselves into the secured enclave "Machopolis".

We know from the beginning that everything went well, by the detailed intro, in which Rex tells his client, how "simple" it was to carry out this small order. How Rex Nebular managed to stay alive, how it got the vase and finally found back, the gamer has to find out for her-/himself.

Installation

Rex Nebular comes on nine 3,5"-disks and takes later approx. 12 MB on hard disk. In the expensive designed retail-box one finds in addition a manual in German and English and also the log, which serves as copy protection basis, is added in two language versions. It's a DOS game, which you can refloat most simply in a pure DOS environment. Under XP "Rex Nebular" is not playable.

It works however quite error free under Windows 95, if one keeps in mind that it needs minimum 575 KB lower memory. As you don't need so much memory during the entire game, it can happen that you play for a while up to a more complex animation sequence, that needs a bit more memory, which then causes a break off. At that point you'll find however a reference of the programmers, how much memory is needed and how you can make it available. You can either during the installation routine or later with the install program determine which gamefeatures, e.g. rotating inventory items or animated text window, have to be switched on and off. That can free crucial memory space. Should there be problems nevertheless, one can also occasionally switch the music and sound off.

During the installation you can also select whether you want to play in the "Nice"- or "Naughty"-mode. The "Naughty" mode is not suitable for children. In order to prevent that the "dear ones" switch it nevertheless on during the game, the developers offer the "Locked Nice"-mode, which can only be selected during the installation procedure. For a mode change you have to install the whole game again then.

Start

No matter, whether you begin or resume a game, you always go to in the start menu first. Here you can find the options "New Game", "Resume last Game", "Watch Intro", "Credits" and "Exit".

"Resume Game" is particularly interesting, if you are forced by a game crash. During the break off it's indicated at the screen, whether it was possible, to save the game automatically and where you can find this savegame.

One can likewise select one of three levels of difficulty at the beginning: Novice, Advanced, Expert. In the two first levels, puzzles were designed simpler or omitted entirely. In addition you cannot run into a dead end or die in such a way that you, as with expert mode, must load a saved game. In the easier levels Rex - usually after a terrible death - begins automatically again at a point short before.

If you have already watched the intro, you can start a new game. There is a one-time copy protection inquiry, where you must find and enter a certain word from the log. The first letter is already given.

The game begins in the spaceship of Nebular, which was very much damaged during the forced landing in a lagoon and is now located under the water surface.

Controls

"Rex Nebular" is mouse-controlled up to the ESC-key, which leads us into the main menu. Besides there are also some hotkeys for a faster access to the functions "Load" or "Save" for example. If you don't have a mouse, you can however use the arrow keys.

We control our hero, like in other mouse-controlled 3rd-person-games, with a leftclick of the mouse on the screen. We can enter a new scene, if the cursor transforms into a "Go-sign".

The screen is divided into the upper action/gaming area and a smaller command/inventory bar at the bottom. Here you can find a verb menu and the scrollable inventory. Hotspots, and those are plenty, are indicated by on-screen-texts every time your mouse comes across. Standard verb for the left mouse button is "Walk to Object". If you click the right mouse button, the standard verb is "Look at Object".

Often a new verb is added at hotspots, if it is no standard action, like "Sit in chair". The default verb "Look" can be exchanged by doubleclick with the right mouse button on another verb in the verb menu.

Doubleclick on the verb "Look" offers a text-overview of the entire area and can be compared to Sierra's "Look around". One can form sentences by clicking, for example "Throw dead fish at rock".

Overall the controls need getting used to at the beginning, but offer a large number of combination options and you really get an answer on everything, even an answer, if you intend to do something senseless. These answers are partly standard sentences, partly very funny: see example Talk to door" in the screenshots.

We lead the few conversations in the game also by mouse-click on the verb "Talk to" and then on the interlocutor, and can select from given question/answers.

Inventory

The inventory is always visible just as the verb list. It consists of a scrollable text area and (if adjusted in such way) a rotating 3D-view of the selected object. With "Look" you can increase the object and receive an additional text description.

What was a bit confusing to me at the beginning, was the fact that you get additional verbs to most objects on the right side. First I did not consider these additional possibilities, until I had more practise. With these additional verbs objects can be manipulated or combined. I found the inventory a bit unclear and complicated through this additional verbs. It needs a longer learning phase, to actually scoop the possibilities.

Other handling

We quickly reach the main menu with the escape key and can save, load, quit the game here or call the extensive option menu.

There are 100 save slots and each can be tagged with a longer text. A really sufficient number. If an already stored savegame is selected, then there is no overwriting warning, so be cautious when clicking fast! The already mentioned autosave function is particularly helpful when an abnormal termination of the game occurs.

Graphics

Both background and character graphics are outstanding for a 10 year old game. Particularly remarkable for me were the successful motion sequences of our hero and also of the other characters, but even more in the animation sequences. Rex must transform during his stay on Androgena by "Gender Bender" into a woman. The large morphing pictures of the conversion are kick-ass. We can also observe that "Rexina's" gait and movements change accordingly womanlike.

The affectionately drawn background graphics show a quantity of allusions to actually existing brands and products: Buckluster Video, Machoprose, Civilization, Durafail Batteries, Polyester Suit Peter, Sahara Off-line etc.. Imaginative and funny!

Less funny I found the massacre of the women troop in the jailhouse by a monster alien, the meat parts and blood distributed everywhere. I'm sorry, but I don't see the fun of pairing humour and realistic massacre and think its absolutely mismatching to make jokes about entrials sticking at the wall!

Puzzles

The puzzles in "Rex Nebular" range from easy to hard, depending on selected difficulty level. The game is not linear in many parts and one can solve al lot of tasks in quite different order.

Of course you have to find objects, manipulate and use them correctly. Rex must enter some locations as a woman, in order to accomplish a task, in other places he only gets ahead as man. The non-linearity lets gamers get ahead quite fluently for a long time period, depending upon difficulty level there can however be some dead ends later.

The puzzles are interesting and usually also logical, except for some very few exceptions. One can die in "Rex Nebular" in many ways. If you're playing as Novice or Advanced, then our hero rises after dying and one can try the scene again at once. If you're playing in Expert mode, you have to load a savegame.

Music /sound/language

In the amazing long introfilm we are coddled with outstanding speech. Unfortunately only in the intro. In the game we must be satisfied then with pure on screen texts. At the time the game was made, all-over-speech was narrowed by the number of disks. The texts are funny, however they don't reach "Space Quest"-level and as said above, don't make jokes about massacres. Besides there is music, which should remind a little of StarWars or Indiana Jones. And somehow I had here and there the feeling that they took some themes from King's Quest. Nothing world-moving. The used sounds are a bit better, but sometimes also nerving, particularly if some background noises sound exactly the same as the continuous clicking when having a keyboard error when starting my PC (sounds, as if one strikes little wooden sticks completely fast.)

Conclusion

The developers came up with many good features: apart from the partial funny story of the war of the sexes also a set of good puzzles is built in. The different difficulty levels and "Nice"- or " Naughty"-modes are great. In both, the detailed manual and on-line help, you find much assistance to install the game and about the handling, but it still has its perfidies. The massacre-scenes are quite yukky, therefore the bed scene between Rex and the natives beauty takes place under the blanket only and is completely blurred on a black/white little monitor in "Naughty" mode, nothing to hide from children.

A special Goodie is the 23pages log, which actually serves as copy protection tool, but is really worth reading. The texts to the comic style illustrated booklet are written by Steve Meretzky, what you however can only learn from the Credits. If you make it to the end, after approx. 20 to 30 hours, then you'll be surprised in the starting menu by an additional menu option "Quotes". It stands for more or less meaningful utterances of members of the developer team.

Those gamers, who can run DOS games with their systems (XP cannot deal with "Rex Nebular") and who like a mixture of Indiana Jones and Space Quest, should grab the game, when they run across it in an on-line auction perhaps. Those who would like to play DOS games more often, should consider the purchase of an old DOS computer at the price of a newly published game.

Total rating: 69%

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