Producer: CRL
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: R T Smith

CRL's latest release comes from the author of highly successful wargames such as Arnhem, Vulcan and Desert Rats.

The player takes the part of a Cyberknight robot (either computer or custom-designed) in a mission to seek out and destroy ten computer controlled opponents. In two player mode, two Cyberknights battle against one another in a fight to the death. Although other robots are present, they form a significantly weaker challenge.

The flick-screen battle arena consists of a series of futuristic tunnels connected by gravity-neutralising lift shafts which allow temporary freedom of vertical movement. In two player mode the screen is split to display the position of both Cyberknights simultaneously.

Computer controlled opponents prowl the corridors waiting to fire lasers and missiles at hostile intruders. These can be destroyed only by careful shooting, and each Cyberknight is equipped with an arsenal of different weapons (selected via the keyboard) including mines, grenade throwers and laserfire.

Injury inflicted on the player is indicated by a number of colour-coded bar graphs which show damage to the head, body and, if your robot is charged by a power pack or batteries, current energy level.

Bonus points are scored by collecting the money icons scattered around the environment and defeating particularly strong opponents. The financial reward following the successful destruction of target robots can be used to increase the power of the cyberknight or even the number robots controlled in the next game.

The package comes complete with a complex design program which allows you to create, name, arm, load and save your own robot designs.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: poorly defined and lacking colour
Sound: no tune with limited sound effects
Options: definable keys. Design programme on Side B

Cyberknights comes complete with an incredibly fat book of complex instructions, but it looks like all the effort that should have gone into the program has been wasted on producing a totally unhelpful set of convoluted rules. The game itself is no more than a fairly standard shoot 'em up pretending to the depths of a complex strategy game. Computer opponents can't be blasted head-on, they have to be hit from certain angles. The only elements this adds to the game are boredom (at best) and extreme frustration (at worst); blasting at extremely resilient opponents has very little to recommend it. Feeble gameplay can't be redeemed by the simplistic (if colourful) graphics or the insignificant sound effects. Even with a designer programme Cyberknights doesn't have much to offer.
KATI [40%]

The instructions for Cyberknights are a joke. Just to prove where the programmer's real interests lie the booklet contains more pages explaining the use of the superfluous design program than the actual game itself - whereas surely a player would spend more time playing the game than using R T Smith's beautiful design program. The game itself is very simple and unaddictive, requiring very little thought. The constant sliding about for standing still) and blasting hell out of another dopey robot is hardly compelling. The basic concept could create little more than the programmer has produced. Such a tedious and tiresome game certainly isn't worth £7.95.
PAUL [35%]

How can CRL charge £7.95 for this? The game on its own isn't worthy of a budget price tag. The graphics are amateurish and colourless, and the only detail that has been put into the game is on the Cyberknights logo - and that looks overdone. There's no tune to be found in the game - just a sound effect or two when you fire. So, it must be the design program on the other side of the tape which boosts up the price; but once you load it you realise that this is also a waste of time! Don't waste your money on Cyberknights, you'll just be very disappointed.
NICK [38%]

CRL
£7.95
Reviewer: David McCandless

Is there life after death? Is the C5 truly groovy? Well much as I'd like to engage in such amazingly existential topics, the real questions I gotta ask are these: is this a platform game, a shoot 'em up or just a sheer load of tripe?

Who knows, maybe Cyberknights is all three. Trouble is this kind of stuff died out with the dinosaurs. I mean I know we all wowed over the junk coming out in 1982 (there wasn't anything else), but that's no reason to thrust abysmal graphics in our faces these days - not for eight whole spondoolics anyway!

The game is a battle against either 10 of the computers own Cyberknights, or another player in addition to the computer. Its played in a maze of unimaginative passages. groovy anti-gravity channels, life-sapping drops and other useless features. And basically you must sit down and destroy your megaplas and metal chums. Simple, innit? Actually no, 'cause even if you do have a whole arsenal of killing gear to choose from, there's never enough time to get to the keyboard before the life is blasted out of you. To win this one you gotta be devious - or just run for your life!

Some structures are impervious to your lasers, but with others you can just sit around shooting through walls and floors - not that this always works 'cause they can do the same, natch. Actually, the best way I found (except with the bug-like efforts on the second level) was to superimpose yourself and blast. It's hard on the joystick fingers, but at least it's somewhat effective.

Collect all the moneybags dotted around and destroy the enemy and you're promoted to the next level. This means lots of credits for the design program, but not much by way of points. Not only that, but once at the higher level that's where you stay until you reload (masochist)

That design-a-bot program I mentioned, on the flip-side of the cassette, allows you to play Frankenstein and create your own Cyberknights or modify existing ones. That's where the credits come in. Design a new Cyberthingy and you've only got 500 credits to play with, but as you win more battles they go up, so you you can re-load a Cyberknight saved from the combat program and add bits. Perversely, a friend of mine (You have friends? Ed), often favours the design stages of games, so this will suit him to the ground. But personally, I have better ways of to occupy my time than playing a few bouts of Cyberknights, my own designs or not.

I truly hate saying "I told you so," but if you want to pay 1988 prices for a 1982-style game, be my guest.

Label: CRL
Author: R.T. Smith
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

So who is this bodger R.T. Smith, that he gets his name emblazoned on the package of his new game Cyberknights? I'll tell you - he's the author of lots of strategy games, and if you ask me he should have stuck with what he's good at. The trouble is that Cyberknights ia a very, very, very, very, very good idea, but the programming just isn't that hot. The graphics are dire and the fancy icon controls don't do much to conceal the fact that all you really have to do is move around a maze zapping robots. Boresville Wyoming, you may well say.

You can play in two-player mode, in which case the aim is to eliminate your opponent, or in one-player mode, where you have ten enemy robots to destroy.

The scenario is the 22nd century, where robot knights battle in vast underground arenas to entertain the upper classes. You move left and right through the tunnels and up and down through lift shafts. If you're equipped with a jet pack, you can fly within the limits of your fuel. Your success in fighting other robots will depend on their specification and armaments. For instance, you can shoot their heads off, but they won't die until you destroy the body. An icon display allows you to select weapons including lasers, mines and radiation grenades.

Prize money is earned by destroying enemies, and can also be found scattered around the arena. There are plenty of helpful tactics to learn, like placing mines where your enemy will become trapped, or taking cover in liftshafts and emerging to fire. The clever part, though, is that although you can fight with default designs of Cyberknights, you can lash together your own using the character designer on the B side of the tape.

Cost, strength, weight, size and power consumption all have to be taken into account as you use the pointer and icon system to cobble together a knight. Completed designs can be named, saved on tape and re-edited for future games. Why do you go funny stripey colours in the lift? Why are there such atrocious colour clashes when two robots collide? Cyberknights is best avoided unless you have an aversion to slick programming and well-designed graphics.

CRL have at you!

Writing high quality 8-bit wargames like Arnhem and Vulcan is one thing, but R.T. Smith has now turned his attention to arcade games. Can he produce them to the same high standard as his earlier works?

Cyberknights is an arcade adventure game with strategic elements. The player controls a Cyberknight and has different objectives to reach, depending on whether one or two players are playing. Assuming there's only one player, the objective is to destroy the 10 computer-controlled robots that wander around the arena. In the two-player mode, the objective is to destroy the other player's Cyberknight.

The arena is large and consists of several rooms connected by various lifts and walkways. Should you happen on a computer-controlled robot in a room you have to use your limited weapons to their best advantage in order to destroy them. Persuading robots to fall out of lifts is another effective method of polishing them off (if you can lure them into one).

Scattered around the arena are small bags of money that are used at the end of the game to purchase better equipment for your Cyberknight. Deciding which bits to add and which to take away is done using the designer program that comes with the package and has to be loaded separately. You can save your Cyberknights to tape so you don't have to struggle for hours just to reach the point you got to last time, but overall the game's structure is repetitive and the novelty soon wears off. It's very doubtful you'll be playing this in a year's time.

Reviewer: Andy Smith

RELEASE BOX
Spec, £7.95cs, Out Now
No other versions planned.

Predicted Interest Curve

1 min: 60/100
1 hour: 70/100
1 day: 80/100
1 week: 60/100
1 month: 20/100
1 year: 0/100

Spectrum 48K: £7.95, Diskette: £14.95

LEGO WARRIORS

Robert T Smith, programmer of Cyberknights, is better known as the author of bestselling wargames such as Arnhem, Desert Rats and Vulcan (all published by CCS.) Bob decided to 'test the waters' of his programming capabilities by writing this arcade game. But has he captured the magic of his previous products in this futuristic combat game with the inevitable strategy overtones?

Cyberknights are robotic warriors of the future, android gladiators fighting to the death in battle arenas. Either one player fights ten increasingly more powerful computer opponents or two players fight it out against each other.

The game is in two parts, a designer program through which a Cyberknight is built up and equipment upgraded, and the combat game where constructed Cyberknights are baptised in fire.

WORKSHOP

The designer program is an icon-driven workshop; equipment can be tried out on the player's Cyberknight. The base components are power source, a body to connect up all the equipment (and provide armoured protection) and a head on which firepower turrets can be positioned.

Without power the robot won't be going anywhere; likewise, adding too much equipment with a weak power source also stops the Cyberknight in its tracks. Each unit has its own merits and disadvantages: atomic generators are expensive, bulky but extremely powerful: solar packs are lightweight but weak and, as they are positioned on the robot's head, exposed to attack. Best power pack, we found, is the chemical fuelcell type: good value for money and it provides a moderate power level. Additionally, batteries can be purchased for extra power - but they don't recharge during play - and energy absorbers are another power source to add to the primary system. In all cases a backup system is required in case the primary power source is destroyed or damaged.

The body falls into two categories: plastic and metal build. Plastic bodies are lightweight, provide protection against acid and electrical attacks but prove useless against radiation. Metal bodies are the opposite, heavy and limited in space for equipment storage, but give good protection against radiation grenades.

Packs can be purchased and attached to provide mountings for other weapons and serve as extra armour. Among them are a flamethrower pack and a jetpack, the latter best used with a lighter robot to keep fuel consumption down.

Once the robot shape is finalised, only weapons remain, and how many depends on cost, weight, power requirements and the number of turret mountings available. Once a weapon has been chosen (and ammunition purchased if necessary), a direction has to be chosen for the weapon to face before turret installation.

Each component has a fixed space into which the various types of equipment can be added. On earlier levels cost is the determining factor when it comes to equipping the robot but as more money is made, larger capacity heads, bodies and packs can be bought, although the level of power drain rises as a result.

THE GAME

The arena is set over a numerous-flipscreen complex of corridors and level-connecting lifts. Bags of money are conveniently left on the floor. The enemy robot (either the player or one of the ten computer opponents) stalks the arena looking for its opposite number. Destroying enemy robots is rewarded with extra cash, but you need to survive other robot attacks before any money can be spent on improving your Cyberknight.

Waiting at the bottom of lifts is a good tactic, allowing the player to fire up and destroy the opponent's armour before he gets into a firing position. Mines can also be laid to restrict enemy movement. in combat the robot head and protective armour can be lost, but its game over if the body is destroyed. An alternative method of winning is to ring a bell found within two rooms in the arena: once rung, the opponent must locate a bell and ring it in response or lose the game. If two players are in action, each has their own separate side-on view of their robot and the immediate area.

The designer is easy to use through the icons, although some are a little confusing in appearance. The display is clean and there's a real sense of satisfaction in seeing the robot building up and turning into a fighting machine. The program then falls flat on its face with what is a very simple, below average, multi-screen combat game using appallingly simple graphics, very weak sound and mediocre use of colour. In combat, most weapons are little different in operation and effect, making the hours designing and experimenting pointless. Cyberknights may be a technically complex program, but much depth and potential has been lost in the poor gameplay.