Reviews

Up until this game, Pete Cooke had a reputation for writing off-beat games such as the text adventure Urban Upstart and the HGV simulator Juggernaut. However, he finally made his impact on mainstream gaming with this post-Elite 3D epic.

The backstory is pure Sci-Fi cliche. Rogue robots have taken over a colony planet and you're on a one man mission to reclaim it for humanity by traveling around its 32 cities, gathering a set of parts for reactor rods, and using them to shut down the planet's central nuclear reactor. If this doesn't have you thinking Star Wars, which had already been adapted into a 3D arcade game, you'd need to have been living in a cave.

As such, it's obviously a game that was evolutionary rather than revolutionary. As well as Star Wars, the graphics were at least partly inspired by Gyron; objects are flat and the only cue of solidity is the illumination and shading. This was a first for Spectrum games and something that didn't find its way into the mainstream for quite a while afterwards. The greatest influence though was obviously from Elite.

Like Elite, it's an open game; there are no set objectives, other than the rather distant one of eventually shutting down the central reactor to finish the game. Unlike Elite, however, there's an overall structure to the game that's not merely randomly generated; each city has its own particular layout and that makes a difference. Some can be tackled easily, where others require special strategies or equipment hidden elsewhere on the planet.

Unlike a lot of other 3D epics, Tau Ceti doesn't at all play at a plod; it's stood the test of time well and the firefights are every bit as fast and furious as you'll get in a modern FPS or space simulator game. A cautious approach is recommended though, as the cities are laden with ambushes and minefields.

As well as the 3D exploration and combat, there's also another side to the game. You can dock with some of the buildings and a natty WIMP interface allows you access to equipment, maps, stored data, a notepad, and the reactor rods which add a puzzle element to the game.

Overall, this is one of the finest moments in Spectrum gaming. It's a complex game that takes some getting to grips with, but it's rewarding enough to be worth the effort. I've finished it once, but it took a heck of a long time.