Before reading this review, count down to line 893, fill our form 4A25-c7 found there, and submit it to the receiving agency for conundrum approbation—in triplicate. Wait two weeks and no phone calls. Sorry, but I'm only doing my job.
If you've ever filled out an income tax form, filed for insurance, applied for a credit card, tried to cash a check at a bank (especially one in New York City ) or, in other words, if you're any sort of mammal short of a llama or hermit, you have an inkling of what to put up with in Bureaucracy. In this latest Infocom text adventure, Douglas Adams, of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame, takes us on a witty tour de force of a society drowning in its own paperwork.
As the story goes, you've landed a new job with the Happitec Corporation and moved to a new house. Okay, so the movers haven't showed up, and there is that slight problem with the bank. Big deal. You’re on your way to France for a training seminar/vacation at company expense.
But before you even had a chance to fill out a change-of-address form, you're forced to confront lost mail, rude clerks, computer literate aborigines and Muzak so homogenized that even the “twiddle bits” have even been taken out of “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” You’ll also be asked to fill out numerous forms—more than you like and less than you need.
All of these hassles tend to drive up your blood pressure. In fact, the game cuts you no slack in this respect. Make a typo or use an unrecognized word and you'll be penalized with a higher blood pressure—a situation that raised my real-life heart rare a few counts. As in real life, if it gets too high, you die.
But merely coping with society isn't the only problem in this game. Paranoia, a byproduct of bureaucracy, runs rampant. The media picks up on this schizo fever by exposing plots (like that leftist organization, the NFL) in such respected periodicals as Popular Paranoia. Not as silly as you think: there really is someone out to get you. And at times it seems like it is everyone from your former employers, the mysterious Deep Thought Corporation, to waiters and a wily nerd who wants a date with your sister.
In Bureaucracy, Infocom once again delivers all of what we’ve come to expect—clever puzzles, impossible mapping and fantastic devices (like the typical Swiss Army knife complete with an assortment of blades, corkscrews and food processors). There are not a few slightly veiled references to previous Infocom games. At one point you'll even find yourself “west of a white house standing in an open field....” And remember “no tea" or Prosser's digital watch? A lot of this is irrelevant to playing Bureaucracy, but it doesn't detract from the game.
Like Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Bureaucracy makes its point with biting satire. Adams dearly has a bone to pick with what he would no doubt call Beadledom. In fact, filing a change-of-address card (and all that entails) is what prompted Adams to write it. As in Heller’s novel, the final solution is using all that red tape against the rule-bound society that generated it. If you have to wait in line to buy this game, do it. And if you don’t like it, well, that's not my department .
Templin, Ben. (July 1987). Bureaucracy. MacUser. (pgs. 71, 73).
Bureaucracy
Douglas Adams
Games
out of 10 (0 vote)
47 / 
2014-04-14 / 
2023-10-26 / 
45cb8e18d9ff65137a51e71d877caa84974a7381 / 
/ 
Bureaucracy.img_.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Mini vMac
