 Any
software users out there who love intense trivia? Mind Grind challenges
players with questions of various difficulties from each of these ten categories:
brain teasers, horror, inventions, random, observation, pop culture, sound
effects, sports/pastimes, world records, and mythology.
Your mission: to prove yourself and your kind as a superior race by successfully completing the five levels of challenges, and to be the first player to reach Galactic Core Coordinates 835, 000/291, 000 (commonly known as the planet Earth). Contestants start out on level one, the Matrix of Knowledge, a large three-dimensional grid, where they must correctly answer a number of questions before being permitted to progress further on their quest. Mind Grind features high quality color, graphics, and sound, complete with movement and speaking. Each category has a corresponding icon which players select to answer questions from that category. The leader of your mission appears periodically to give instructions to your current level or to make humorous and cynical comments. For example, if a question is answered incorrectly, he will say something like "Nice try, cerebrally impaired one." Though some of the remarks are a little harsh, they make the game more interesting and provide players with incentive to win. The game can be played with either one or two people, and will provide many hours of fun and puzzlement. All of the levels feature the same kind of questions, but there are a large number of questions, so it doesn't ever become redundant. Each level is progressively more difficult than the preceding one, so make sure to save your game; that way, it will be possible to reload after you die and start from the same location. All questions are presented in multiple choice format. Point values for correct answers vary from 50 to 150, and 200 points are awarded to the first one who finishes a level. However, players must be quick, because the value of each answer decreases rapidly; when the point level reaches zero, your time is up and you forfeit the question. My favorite type of questions are the observations and the brain teasers. The observations, for the most part, present a picture or moving scene for a short period of time and then ask a detailed question about what was just shown. The teasers include short logic puzzles, mysteries, math problems and others. There is a trouble shooting section in the user manual and a help number in case a problem arises. One of the possible problems (which is one that I experienced) is that the sound effects on the questions in that category fail to make noise, rendering them particularly difficult to answer. This is caused by the sound card not responding well to the compressed audio, and can most likely be fixed by updating to more recent drivers. Also, I found the last level a bit confusing to understand with the given directions, but other than that, I really enjoyed this game. The cleverness and intelligence of the program make it even more amusing, and players learn while answering the trivia questions. Mind Grind is a very worthwhile and entertaining program, and I highly recommend it. The test machine was a 486DX2-80, 16MB RAM, 4X CD-ROM, ATI 1MB SVGA (non accelerated). Minimum requirements are - 486DX2-66, 8MB RAM, 2X CD- ROM, 13MB free disk space, SVGA (256 color). You must be running Windows 95 as your operating system, and have a Sound Blaster or compatible card. A Pentium CPU is also recommended. Microforum, the games creator, can be reached toll free by phone at 800-465- 2323, or on the internet at www.microforum.com.
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