BUDGET BUREAU
£1.99
A mixed bunch of new budget games arrived from Silverbird this month, of which the most original is Pasteman Pat (65%). In this devious picture puzzle game, Pat Splatt has to use his paste brush to assemble a large wall poster from the squares which Nasty Norville has jumbled up (they resemble an SU poster!). It sounds easy enough, but on the most difficult levels you're likely to get a headache sorting dozens of small squares, while inaccurate brushwork by the hero causes frustration. Add to this the extra problems caused by a time limit and the objects thrown by Norville's henchmen (they knock Pat off his ladder!) and you have one challenging game. But if you're a wallpapering fan, this is your game.
Also splashing down from Silverbird is Turbo Boat Simulator (32%), a nautical (but not very nice) shoot-'em-up. Lost in enemy territory, your boat patrols horizontally-scrolling waterways, searching for map parts dropped by allied planes (why can't the pillocks drop a whole map?!). Play simply involves avoiding and shooting enemy submarines and missiles until you find all the map pieces to send you to the next level. Grotty monochromatic graphics don't give much incentive to play on in a game about as exciting as squashed hedgehog racing. Its best feature is definitely the 128K title tune.
Skateboard Joust (30%) is another disappointing Silverbird effort, featuring very primitive graphics and minimal sound. Gameplay is reminiscent of the ancient jousting game, Ostron. But here you have a hovering skateboard and must destroy opponents by jumping up to let your board fly into them! The trendy sport of skateboarding has been over-used of late, and this off-beat implementation provides little excitement. Even Nick 'rad lad' Roberts quickly lost interest (but not his cool).
Just as dull is Players' unoriginal beat-'em-up, Street Gang (24%). Strolling through eight New York streets, you are attacked by all manner of punks and thugs, some of them wielding machine guns. The bad news is that despite the presence of many foes, progress is surprisingly easy. This is especially so when you discover that by continuously jumping to the right, completion of all eight levels is a mere formality. This amazing feature helps to make Street Gang about as eventful as a monks' wife-swapping party.
£2.99
'Who dares wins' is Code Masters' favourite motto. After all, they've dared to sell some pretty dire software at times, yet made a fortune in the process. True to their adventurous spirit, they've come up with SAS Combat Simulator (71%) (neat title, lads!). The good news is that this is one of their better releases. Most of the action is depicted by some decent overhead-view graphics, with your little soldier shooting and grenading swarming enemies. Starting on foot, he can find an armoured jeep and a tank to drive while he blasts or runs over enemy soldiers, and blows even trains to smithereens. After reaching the end of a stage, play switches to a side-view hand-to-hand combat section, with yet more soldiers for the violent hero to punch. Unfortunately this section is both repetitive and irritating as near-perfect timing is needed to dispatch countless foes. Even so, SAS Combat Simulator is a challenging shoot-'em-up with plenty of content.
But there are some places even the SAS would fear to tread. The murky depths of the Atlantic are home for many a deadly shark, and also the setting for Titanic (45%) from Kixx. To reach the famous shipwreck, your diver must negotiate a network of underwater caves infested with a variety of vicious sea creatures. Annoyingly, running out of oxygen sends the diver right back to the start, although I can't understand how he'd survive anyway - the water pressure at such depths would be enough to squash him flat! Nevertheless, survive he does to witness primitive graphics and gameplay inferior to Durell's ancient Scuba Dive. Cartographers will no doubt enjoy exploring and mapping the large cave system, but I found the whole exercise rather dull.
Set in the equally dangerous world of the Roman Empire, Kixx's Colosseum (70%) is all about chariot racing. But this isn't exactly a sport to take up for health reasons. The drivers are equipped with weapons, and the winner is the sole survivor at the end of the race! As Benurio, wrongly-accused of treason (you were on holiday at the time), you must prove your innocence by winning a chariot race (this is almost as strange as British justice!). Racing round the oval track, obstacles must be avoided, while you hack away at other drivers with your axe. If a driver is killed, you take his weapon even if it is less powerful than your present one. The action is fast and furious, albeit very repetitive. Although the sprites are simple, the track is fast-scrolling, and the perspective for the bends is ingenious: the viewpoint follows the chariot round. Despite a very simple concept, Colosseum is surprisingly addictive.
But it's back to the future for The Hit Squad (70%) from Code Masters. In post-apocalypse 2125, evil Emilio Bocker rules the city of Los Angeles with an iron grip. Something must be done, so you decide to search the city for Booker's hidden lair. But who are you? Well, when the game starts you can choose to be one of four different streetfighters, such as stealthy Stak and 'sexy Xena'! Exploring twelve parts of the city simply involves jumping around platforms, shooting nasties while searching for teleport and weapon disks. But the action is well-portrayed by large, Colourful graphics, while the digitised title picture of the four fighters is particularly impressive.
Another playable Code Masters release is Fast Food (68%). Despite the strange moniker, this is actually a souped-up version of Pac-Man! The hero, however, resembles that old egghead, Dizzy. Hamburgers chase the oval hero around many mazes, while he tries to eat all the other food. Special abilities may be obtained, including burger-eating, by collecting various objects. What really disappoints is the pedestrian pace at which the action takes place. But amusing, animated screens every three levels provide an incentive to keep playing. The neat presentation is improved further on 128K machines by the inclusion of a neat in-game tune.
However, even decent presentation would do little to improve Cult's dire Soccer Star (28%). This football management game is about as unrealistic as you can get. Firstly, there are only eight teams per division. But worse still, you are only allowed to buy and sell players at the beginning of the season: so if your team is rubbish, you're stuck with it! Match presentation is equally poor, consisting mainly of a ball wobbling along a line - this is meant to represent 'the balance of the match'! The goalmouth action is slightly better but is hardly exciting. With such limited options and poor presentation, Soccer Star is a sure candidate for relegation.
FAST FOOD
Code Masters
£2.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann
Those Oliver twins seem to knock out a new game about once a week. Don't they eat? Don't they sleep? Don't they surround themselves with luscious dusky young lovelies willing to obey their every command, no matter how illegal or physically inconvenient? (Doesn't look like it. Ed) Oh well, never mind, 'cos at least they're busy writing Speccy games for us mere gamesters. This one is aimed at the younger end of the market, which is another way of saying that practised Spec-chums may find it a touch dreary. Pac-Man is the inspiration here, which means 30 different-ish mazes in which Dizzy (yup, same one) runs around avoiding nasties and chasing goodies - bits of scoff, in fact - which have to be consumed before you move on to the next level. The other main inspiration is Bubble Bobble, and so anyone who really fancies playing a sort of scaled-down combination of the two will probably love it. As it's for the kids, ifs pretty easy - it's also beautifully presented and, in a splendid new step for the Code Masters empire, has neither a photograph of the Darling brothers nor a 'press' quote by David Darling anywhere on the cassette inlay. Hip hooray. For us more sophisticated mites, of course, it's snore city, but then should everything be designed for unashamed thrillseekers like us? Quite. It's not a Dizzy game, though - not in the sense that Diz fans would understand, at least. Leave it to the sprogs.
Label: Codemasters
Author: The Oliver Twins
Price: £2.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Andi Cummings
Remember those first generation computer games which all involve chasing things in and out of mazes and getting bonus points? Thought those games werre gone forever? Think again. Because Codemasters are bringing them back in the form of FAST FOOD but is it a tasty little snack or just plain indigestible?
FAST FOOD is a maze game with a vengeance. Bits of assorted junk food are spread around various parts of it, you eat the food to gain points and eat the other objects that appear randomly.
Some of these enable you to increase or reduce your speed - some let you eat the monsters chasing you (ring any bells?). The best food lets you appear and disappear which makes it difficult for the monsters to find you The game is not, as you may have gathered, astoundingly original. But there is enough here in the gameplay and graphics not to make it a total yawn.
The objective in the game is for you to clear as many screens as possible, by eating your way through all the food and getting bonus points by eating objects and the monsters chasing you. I got through around 15 levels, though there are more. There are no great differences in layout, the only changes to each level being in the colour, more monsters chasing you on every sheet and a slight increase in speed on later levels.
The graphics are reasonable but not astounding. There just isn't that much you can do with a yellow blob, though the various foods ie: hamburgers, chicken and pizzas are all done reasonably well. The sound is pretty decent (a voice says "Fast Food" at the beginning of the game) and the "blob gobbling its food" noise is done quite well.
I think the game begins too easily on the first two screens, there are no monsters chasing you, so the excitement is not exactly fever pitched. Things get harder but not that much. Could be just the thing for really young kids, otherwise avoid.
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