Producer: Players
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Paul Griffiths, Mike Brown, Martin Severn and Andrew Severn

Contact has been lost with the orbital plutonium reprocessing installation, and the Marine Corp top brass believe Jabba McGut, leader of alien terrorist group, Denizen, to be responsible. Armed only with the latest in technical weaponry - the self loading 'Quick Kill' rifle - the player sets about destroying Jabba McGut and his allies.

The terrorists are hiding in sub levels one, two, and three of the installation, and on each level 20 explosive bolts have to be detonated to jettison the section into space. The game starts on sub level one and the player is provided with 99 rounds of ammunition. Extra ammo and energy can be collected and a torch used to illuminate darkened areas. Parts of the screen are blocked oft by doors, but collection of key cards allows access to further sections of the complex.

Once all of the bolts on a level have been detonated, the player has 20 seconds to find the lift that takes him to the next level, before being blown into the void.

On reaching the third level, the player enters the lair of Jabba McGut, where the evil one is faced in a fight to the death.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: super digitised pictures on title screen. Game graphics improve the further you get, and the end sequence is terrific. Lots of colour and little clash
Sound: poor sound effects but good title tune
Options: definable keys

The quality of Players' budget games these days is amazing - even better than the majority of full price games. Denizen is packed with little extras that add to the presentation. The title screen bears a VCR scroller with digitised pictures of the programming team and characters appearing to a brilliant sound track. The game itself has got some really great graphics (level 3 especially) and colour has been used to its full advantage with hardly any clash visible at all. Only the slow character movement irritates to any degree; another excellent game from Players, keep it up lads!
NICK

Graphically, Denizen is good, with a dependable looking Marine yomping through loads of smart meanie-filled screens. My only real moan is the self-loading 'Quick Kill' rifle which is anything but quick. Several frantic pounds on the fire button were needed to elicit a response, by which point the alien hoodlums had usually sent my character to an early grave. The game style is looking a bit jaded now; you've probably seen it all before, but Denizen is a reasonable shoot 'em up and still worth a look.
MARK

BARGAIN BASEMENT

And down in the Cheapies Emporium this wee (nothing over £3 considered), is Bristol's answer to Billy Idol, Nat Pryce!

Players
£1.99
Reviewer: Nat Pryce

Yet again an evil bunch of mutant alien slime-balls have settled down on a space station, and you're the only person around who's stupid enough to go and ask them to leave. Grasping your futuristic version of the eviction order - a quick kill rifle - and a flashy battle computer with more loose wires than a Spectrum, you teleport into the space station Denizen, for all the pre-release hype and droolsome graphics, is little more than a dull maze plod. Collect cards to open doors, blow up explosive bolts and shoot alien life forms - all pretty ordinary stuff. In fact, apart from the graphics, there is nothing which makes Denizen stand out from the hordes of other, similar games. It's slow and quite un-responsive and the repetitive action drastically reduces the lasting appeal. I'd only buy this if I were a mad mapper, or p'raps just mad.

Label: Players
Author: Paul Griffiths
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tamara Howard

Players. So phenomenally flabbergastingly good over the past few months, that we get terribly excited when we hear that a new launch is planned. So when Denizen was announced we found ourselves in need of a good hosing down and a long hanging out to dry.

Denizen, true to arcade tradition, conies complete with completely spurious storyline. Jabba McGut has taken over a plutonium reprocessing plant high above the earth, and it's down to you to chuck him out.

First impressions of Denizen will make you feel all flushed and wobbly. The graphics are just knock out, well up to the standard of previous Players' epics. The game is played plan-view. Beginning on Level One, there's first a maze of corridors, wonderfully detailed. Scattered around the corridors are various pass cards which are necessary to open gates to other sectors. Also scattered around the place are fly like things which are hell bent on getting their tasty sticky tongues wrapped around you and draining you to death. It's a bit like Gauntlet really.

So, off you go, picking up the keys, snuffing the flies and looking for the torch. The torch. Necessary to light up the darker areas of the complex, but don't ask me what difference that makes in life 'cos I've not found the darned thing yet. Search also for explosive bolts, necessary to jettison Jabba and all his contaminated muck.

Coupled with this exciting, thrill-a-minute gameplay is a natty little computerised display at the bottom of the screen showing pass keys held, remaining ammunition, score and heart rate. The slower your heart rate, the more danger you're in. Heart rate stops, you're dead.

Denizen is certainly on the tasty side. Sadly the gameplay's just a bit on the tedious side. You'd think that there's so much going on that there'd hardly be a second to breathe. Not true. Your little man ("well he can't walk very fast can he, not in that space suit") trundles around very slowly. The grizzly flies on level one, the ghastly plant-like things on level two and the radioactive blurgs on level three don't seem terribly worried about going for your guts, they'll happily meander around the place, and if they happen to bump into you, all well and good.

Add to this the fact that your remarkable, 'state of the art' self loading rifle acts in the manner of an aerosol gun, two slow puffs and off goes yer fly, and you'll find yourself with a game that looks remarkably pretty but is actually not dreadfully exciting to play.

Denizen isn't up to Joe Blade standard. It looks remarkably pretty, but the gameplay lags behind. Still, if you've got the patience to keep at it, you may find it rewarding. Me, I got fed up when my lifeform gets terminated for no apparent reason.