With Der Planer, a new publisher entered the market… apparently not having had a better idea than fulfilling the cliché of German business simulations. Even more so as although Greenwood was new, the people behind it weren't. Seems they loved the genre so much that they never went anywhere else in the short company history.
We're entering the world of logistics. There is nothing to produce or to sell, but only other people's goods to transport. You don't even have your own company, but you will be (so far, so realistic) employed. Though not as a regular employee, but being a full-fledged yuppie, you will obviously directly start as manager. The company will hand you the keys to success in exchange for a salary plus the option for a success bonus, but only for a limited time (typically few months). Success being not only defined by profits, but also by achievement of strategic goals, such as expansion into pre-defined areas.
Infocom takes us back to the times of Cold War, in a classic tale of spies the two blocks collide, and only you can stop an evil plot before time runs out.
That is, the authors throw you in the role of three of the said spies, who find themselves in a small imaginary country near the west-east border, where a high ranking ambassador is going to be assassinated.
Now, I would bet that at least half of our readers don't even remember the Cold War firsthand. When the game was released in the late 1980s, it was still very much alive, though, in spite of the slowly developing, but still very fragile attempts at Perestroika and Glasnost.
Admittedly, the master detective has always been a great attraction to me and the reviews of this game have sounded extremely positive throughout. The previous part was quite recommendable and I already reviewed it. In the end, curiosity triumphed over my commitments and I spent the good 10 hours of playing time in order not to miss the latest developments in crime fighting of the master detective. For connoisseurs of the series, it should be mentioned that even more recent developments have already been realized in a successor to this 6-year-old title. My judgement will not be objective, like someone who didn't grow up with the books of Arthur Canon Doyle, and perhaps thinks more of Pikachu in terms of a Master Detective.
