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Chewy: Esc from F5
 I must admit I'm a bit of a 'push-over' when it comes to cute, cuddly little cartoon characters ... the more colourful the better. Simon, of Simon the Sorcerer fame, utterly captured my heart strutting around in his technicolour gear, and so did Discworld's Rincewind, not to mention Feeble with his apple-green complexion. Well Chewy is another such character who is destined to solve problems by rushing around collecting everything he can lay his hands on, he's the prettiest pink, and he, too, has a quirky personality of his own. Now I'm not saying he's in the same league as Simon or Rincewind or Feeble, but he's pretty cute just the same.
Chewy has a mission in this third-person perspective cartoon caper, he's out to rescue his good friend, Clint, who has been captured by the dreaded Borks who just might be distant relations of Feeble owing to their greenness. Chewy has to first escape his prison before he can get on with the job, but then it's all fun and games as he sorts himself out and picks up some friends (and loses one) along the way to achieving his goal.
This journey has heaps of problems to solve for intrepid adventures who want a bit of light relief from the real problems of life. The puzzles aren't brain-teasers, but they are quite crazy and evading those terrible Borks is entertaining, as is winning the pumpkin competition, writing a bestseller, and capturing the troublesome ghost. Along the way you'll meet a whole collection of vaguely familiar characters to engage in conversation including Mr Spock's twin and an Indiana Jones 'wannabe', and, Chewy makes a special friend at the beginning of the game who has some useful tricks up his/her ar ... er ... sleeve.J
Now Chewy is a brave little fella and he delights in tempting fate and taunting his enemies. He is chirpy and cheerful even in the most dire circumstances. If he gets a bit insistent you can turn off the voices and just read the subtitles, but you can't enable both options at once. You can also balance the sound effects and music, or turn them off as well. Pressing the right mouse button brings up a menu where you can go to the above options. This menu also contains the saveload functions and the action icons (walk, takeuse, look and talk) and provides inventory access.
First published in 1997 this title harkens right back to days of cartoon style games that weren't as polished as they are today or, dare I say it, even two years ago. So don't expect dazzling special effects, needlepoint sharpness, or zillions of colours to ooze out of your monitor because you'll be disappointed. This one is just a bit of harmless fun and sits squarely on the silly side of the ledger. It's one of those games that parents and kids can join in and play (I think I detected just one slightly 'iffy' snatch of dialogue and all the female characters are of the usual top-heavy variety). The game doesn't come with a printed manual so you must install Adobe Acrobat to read it off the disk, but it's all simple point and click, very easy to slip into. Chewy has lots of endearing antics to charm both the young and the not-so-young.
Copyright © Rosemary Young 1999.
All rights reserved.
System requirements:
486 DX 33, 4MB RAM, 18 MB free hard drive space, 2 speed CD ROM, DOS 5.0 or higher or Windows
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