Producer: US Gold
Retail Price: £8.99
Author: Tarann

In a future world, controlled by the Master Focus, war is no longer fought on the physical plane, but in people's brains; instead of their lives the victims lose their minds.

The Focus fellowships are battling for supremacy and as a result of their psychic activity, the world is slowly going mad. Three members of a resistance group have been captured. Your mission is to enter the minds of these men and destroy the Focus's most powerful weapon - Ocular, the Dream Demon.

Two of the men are imprisoned in the offices of Megabuck Inc, whilst the third is trapped in the world of Wynn, a planetoid two-headed snake. A dream hopper provides transport between dreams, provided sufficient energy is available.

Throughout all areas, demi- and giant demons roam; if the player hits them, he will awaken by degrees. Shooting the demi-demons releases a variety of globes which bestow such goodies as lift passes and cards giving the player access to sleeping potions. For each two blue psy-globes collected a section of a dreamer's image is reassembled in the centre of the screen display.

Having collected all three images, you face Ocular, the prince of madness. Shooting each of his six eyes in turn destroys the evil monster and simultaneously, releases the world from its nightmare.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Kempston. Sinclair
Graphics: garish backgrounds, blocky sprites and plenty of colour clash
Sound: none

In my opinion Dream Warrior is dire. A splodgy main character sprite hobbles around a cluttered screen in what looks exactly like a diver's suit. Scrolling is jerky, with the meanies unconvincingly hurtling across the screen. Dream Warrior bored me to tears within the first few minutes of play. At first, I ignored the graphics and prayed that some sort of game was hidden beneath the outer layer - I was disappointed. This type of simple shoot and collect-'em-up is as old (and as interesting) as the proverbial hills.
MARK [29%]

The use of colour in Dream Warrior is terrible. Variously coloured demi-demons move over garish two-coloured backdrops with terrible colour clash. I thought the blue and cyan colour scheme of the first level was bad, but on another level it's even worse: red and white - it's enough to make you throw up! As if that isn't bad enough, the main character is clumsily drawn and even the scrolling is very jerky. The whole game looks such a mess! Trundling around, shooting demons and collecting their pods is so boring and repetitive. The whole exercise seems totally tedious and pointless - enough to send you to sleep! I could never have dreamed of such a monotonous, badly programmed game - even in my worst nightmares.
PHIL [27%]

The main character is detailed and so are the backgrounds - it's just a pity they're both in the same game because they look terrible together. The controls are awkward - you can't go in any direction without bumping into something. The character recognition is clumsy and gives the game an overall feel of untidiness. When a couple of aliens come on to the screen it looks as if the game has crashed rather than progressed - they're just a mass of pixels, the same colour as everything else. Dream Warrior looks like one big mistake.
NICK [38%]

US Gold
£8.99
Reviewer: Jonathan Davies

Now I've read some pretty naff plots in my time, but this one has to take the biscuit. It's probably the most contorted, contrived, badly-written piece of fiction I've ever had to wade through since reading my last school report! Still, here goes...

An evil organisation called Focus is sending Dream Demons to attack people in their sleep. Four astral scientists called Asmen (with just the one "S") find out how to combat them with pulsar neutrons, but before they can do so, three of them are captured by Ocular, the greatest dream demon of them all. You are the one who isn't of course, and now you've got to reclaim the other three.

But let's play along: to rescue your chums you'll have to get into their dreams using the dream hopper, which is charged up with hopper energy. This is collected by shooting demi-demons, which flit around the place, obviously trying to hitch a lift back to Manic Miner.

Other demons give you bits of the scientists' Psychic Images, which need to be collected to complete the game. The remaining ones give you credit cards which can be swopped for increased Sleep Depth (oh yeah, run out of this and the game's over) of lift-passes to move between levels.

To be honest, after a few minutes of playing this I was quite ready to write it off as a no-hoper. I'd even got a great selection of dismissive phrases lined up for it. But (sniff) you'll have to wait for the next offender that comes my way, 'cos after a while Dream Warrior really began to grow on me.

If it's action you're after, Dream Warrior is hardly going to get the adrenaline pumping, but it plods along at its own pace and for those who are prepared to accept its little idiosyncracies, it should give plenty of hours per pound.

If only I could work out why US Gold keep putting words in capital letters for no APPARENT reason in THE middle OF the instructions. P'raps it's GOT a sticky caps-lock KEY?

US Gold send you to sleep.

Psychological warfare's what this game's all about. Set in the world of the future when physical wars no longer exist, you play the part of a Dream Warrior who's out to rescue his chums who've been captured by a weird being called Ocular.

Ocular's a Dream Demon, an evil secret weapon devised by the powers of Mega Corporation, who control pretty much everything. Ocular has linked the dreams of your three trapped friends and imprisoned their psychic images.

You start the game at the offices of Megabuck Inc, and the idea is to destroy the demons that roam the offices, some of whom carry small portions of your friends' psychic images. Collect the images of all three and you then come face to face with Ocular for the fined showdown.

Dream Warrior's less than involving because the game task is so repetitive, and it soon becomes a chore to play.

Reviewer: Andy Smith

RELEASE BOX
IBM PC, £19.99dk, Out Now
Spec, £8.99cs, £12.99dk, Out Now
C64/128, £9.99cs, £11.99dk, Out Now
Amstrad, £9.99cs, £14.99dk, Imminent

Predicted Interest Curve

1 min: 70/100
1 hour: 75/100
1 day: 50/100
1 week: 30/100
1 month: 20/100
1 year: 0/100

Spectrum 48/128 £8.99
PC £19.99

Future wars are not fought physically, but in dreams. World power belongs to the sinister Focus fellowship although resistance groups exist. One such group consists of four scientists - called Asmen - who find a way to defeat Focus's most powerful weapon, the Dream Demon. Unfortunately three of the team have been discovered.

In Dream Warrior (reviewed in TGM009, CBM 64 51%), you take the role of the fourth Asman and must free your colleagues by recovering the pieces of their psychic images. Play starts in the offices of Megabuck, inhabited by psy-globes which release pods when shot. These, when collected, give access cards to lifts or safes, energy or a section of the psychic image. You travel to various dreams via the dream hopper and to succeed you must complete the three images before the captured scientists wake.

Both Spectrum and PC games are similar graphically and in gameplay. Backdrops are garish - particularly on the Spectrum - animation is not smooth and repetition abounds. Sound is functional. Neither version compares favourably to the Commodore 64/128 game.