Reviews

In something of a radical departure from their string of innovative graphical adventures, Gargoyle games re-branded themselves as FTL, and went back to their Ad Astra roots with this vertically scrolling shooter.

Graphically, it's a total riot. I don't think anyone had ever considered something so bold and colourful on the Spectrum in this particular genre before. The techniques used are pretty obvious; all the moving objects stick to exact attribute squares, and the outlandish designs and less than aerodynamic shapes are key to the illusion. Meanwhile the backgrounds slide along just enough overlap to cover any bleeding tiles and, although there is still some colour clash, it's all lost in the excitement.

As for the game itself, it's perhaps not everyone's idea of the ideal scrolling shooter. These were largely the days before power-ups, boss levels and so on. It's also relatively short with just four levels to see before you go round them all again. However, the difficulty is pitched such that even these are going to be a challenge that you can't just fly through on the seat of your pants. You've got to learn each section to get through, although there's just enough of a random element with the bullets to keep you on your toes.

Ultimately, it's very much an iconic game; proof that the Spectrum could still hold its own at a genre that, at first glance, it seemed totally unsuited to.

Suprisingly colourful space shoot'em up, it was a technical achievement for the Spectrum at the time, and it's still very nice to watch now.

Not only, it's even quite a tough, but addictive game, with furious action, and lot of things to destroy or dodge.

There's a flaw, to be true: there aren't power ups, and, consequently, you can't get the brief feeling of "almost-omnipotence" that can be found in later shooters, and that are one of the main attractive of the genre, I think.

Nevertheless, a classic.

To play Lightforce on a keyboard you need to find a comfortable layout so that you can fire quickly enough to make progress. This is made tricky becuase Space is not an option (unless you use Spin and reset using its controller options).
Once I could fire quickly enough I found LF an above average shoot em up made cheerful by the technical achievements that Matt B summarises well in his review.
Gargoyle/FTL programmed games that displayed great techical merit often too much to the point of making a great game good. LF fits into that pattern. The desire to set new standards in colour meant the actual look of the sprites took on a slightly heavy shape. Your craft in LF is so ugly it could be from a C64 game.

At the time of its release, the big "ooh" with this game was the full colour graphics with no colour clash, something achieved by moving everything eight character blocks at a time. Despite this rather jerky movement, the large sprites, reasonable challenge, fast gameplay and varied levels manage to combine to make this an enjoyable shooter.

I've used Lightforce in many arguments when a C64 moans about the Speccy having no colour in games !

Most Speccy games aren't colourful yet have great gameplay, Lightforce is slightly the opposite !

The graphics and colours are superb, but the game is , well quite dull ! I've still given the game a 4 as its a great little shoot em up but it could have been so much better. The levels and enemies arent that exciting but I do tend to go back to Lightforce quite a lot for one more go.

1986 Faster Than Light (UK)
by Greg Follis and Roy Carter

Brilliant shoot-em-up. The first to incorporate colour in both ships and background without color clashing. 4 levels of great action.
The only complain is the lack of smoothness other games have, and lack of power-ups, but it still plays great.
A classic of its kind.
Warm up your thumbs before playing, that's a friends advice!

It's a nice shooter with great graphics but it lacks power-ups and can either be too difficult or too short. Not quite brilliant but still really nice.

Without doubt one of the finest shmups to grace the ZX Spectrum, in fact to many this is regarded as the very best....I'm disagreeing only because I've been fortunate to play pretty much every shmup on the Spectrum and I've found one or maybe too I like better, but still it's among the best. The one thing that bothered me most was that this is really difficult, like R-Type difficult if that says something...or else I'm just terribly crap at this game, yes that'll be it...(he sobbed uncontrollably).

I don´t like this game and I don´t understand how anybody does ...

Does this game have the most ugly spaceship or what? It looks more like a toner cartridge than an inter galactic death bringer. The rest of the game's very pretty. It's an average shoot-em-up but at least it looks nice.

Nowadays it can look like a travesty from space. But in its days it was kinda surprising, in the good sense.

It can seems impossible to follow whats going on with a so fast and brusque action.

Amazingly.. it works. Is playable, may even come to hook the player and provoke to rematch to reach further.

There's no denying its colourful graphics and smooth gameplay makes this one of the better shoot-em-ups on the Spectrum, but I just wish the difficult wasn't so brutal at times and I don't last as long as I'd like to which means I can't see a lot more of the game and that frustrates me.

Cool shooter for the Spectrum. Surprisingly colourful, this game is graphically very good, but hard to play. The scroll is smooth, the movement and sounds are correct. Overall it's an addictive game with, curiously, the most bizarre and tackiest space ship you'll ever control in a game.

Fantastic SHMUP ! ! ! ! ! !

At least,back in its time it really made very much noise.
Problem now, its technique to save you from color clash doesn't impress nobody, but back then it was a revolution !.
Frantic colourful intergalactic action!!

When I want to compensate for the lack of good graphics and detail in games that are simulation-oriented (specifically spaceships), I turn to Light Force. It makes me believe in some way that it is the continuation of that space simulation, that you can enter a supposed tactical mode of that simulation game (because many times that game is vector-based or even with an old "pseudo 3D simulation" so it lacks the detail of the typical SHMUP)
The perfect combination for me is Elite + Light Force

so Light Force offers a perfect fit for this way to "fix it".


. Such is the charisma of this Great game