Reviews

Utter Tripe is like a speed-typing game in the vein of the famous House of the Dead spin-off for the Dreamcast and PC, The Typing of the Dead but with Cauldwell’s usual brand of surrealism and Pythonesque humour.

The idea is a clever one, with various mini-games to play through involving typing words as fast or well-timed as possible to progress to the next round. The game is in what I consider to be the classic era of Spectrum graphics, full of colour and brightness, as opposed to the early basic graphics and the later monochrome era.

Nonetheless, while the game is well executed it could be better. The same words crop up too frequently enabling you to quickly learn how to type them and too many of the levels provide absolutely no challenge whatsoever, with no discernable difficulty curve.

The odd level shows the potential for the formula but ultimately, strange as it is to say it for a Cauldwell game, Utter Tripe feels slightly undercooked. However, it’s worth checking out just for the instructions, written in mock-medieval language, describe the tripe wizards, those who practise the art of cobblers. Classic Cauldwell humour, but his other games have proved a better vehicle for it in the past.

Taken from: http://zombiesatemyxbox.com/2011/10/05/zx-spectrum-games-of-2011-reviews/