Reminds me of him reviewing Star Control II, which he also seemed to overly criticise, he did however make a legitimate point that the game mechanic of Kohr-Ah only slowly annihilating the galaxy meant that you may have actually already reached a point where winning becomes impossible, but you may not realise it until quite a long time later.

Although I generally remember 90s games being somewhat brutally unforgiving, the lesson they would teach most thoroughly is to save often.