Review by Raphie on 13 Jul 2009 (Rating: 3)
It's a shmup, then you walk around collecting things, then it's a shmup again. It took me 17 years to finally get the grips of this game! Man I am slow with these games aren't I?
Sabotage was a game which garnered mixed reviews upon release. While some praised the game's playability and graphics, others criticized it for ripping off FTL's classic Light Force as well as it's mediocre next-to-nothing sound FX. Upon playing it again myself, I too have a mixed review on it.
The game has monochrome yet pretty nice graphics where unlike some shoot'em ups for the Spectrum, you can see what you are shooting at and where you are suppose to go. Some criticized Sabotage for the big sprites but I personally found this to be a benefit and I quite like the sprites in the game.
The game itself plays very well, yes it the same ol' stuff with shooters, you know, shoot anything that's in front of you, but I love that stuff and can never get enough of it so personally, it's always gonna appeal to me. The most annoying thing about the game is that when you lose a life, you start at the very beginning of the level, even if you die at the boss you start at the very beginning.
But that's only one element of gameplay, the other is like a maze where you walk around collecting, well bubbles or orbs, I never quite worked out what they were, maybe it says so on the instructions but I can't be bothered to look if WoS even have them so we'll leave it there. Anyways the main thing is you've to collect a piece of blueprint whilst avoiding the falling birds. Honestly this isn't as fun as the shooty part.
Sound FX, well the reviewers were right about this, there's just a few bips in the entire game and that's all she wrote. Disappointing yet not suprising as there are plenty of Spectrum games with little or no Sound FX at all.
Like I said earlier, because I love the genre almost too much, games like this are always going to appeal to me. But on the flipside, the game is good but falls short of greatness.
Review by dandyboy on 05 Dec 2013 (Rating: 3)
Big targets , double fire ,,, almost imposible not to hit the enemy . . .
Review by YOR on 06 Dec 2020 (Rating: 4)
May as well go ahead and look at the other Sabotage game I have stored on my emulator. This one is by Zeppelin from 1988 and it too is a multi-genre game. It begins as a standard shooter and then turns into a bloody maze! I mean I don't know what it is with games called Sabotage and switching genres mid-game but it's funny that there's two I've played and both have different genres in the games, how coincidental and bloody bizarre. Anyway like I mentioned first part is a standard shooter and it looks very much like Light Force, saying that that it's nothing out of the ordinary and pretty passible. After beating the boss we move into a maze-type game, there's orb-like objects and a blueprint to collect before returning back the way you enetered, all this whilst avoiding the falling birds and withing a time limit. It's not bad, I was expecting this to kill the game's potential like the platformer did for the previous Sabotage game but it didn't, it was actually pretty decent. Once this is achieved it goes back to the shooter element for level 2 and I presume you collect something else later on but my game ended by this point, pity because I was getting into it. I liked this, it's much better than Quicksilva's Sabotage and while it does stray into the boring side it's playable, the maze part added to the game and didn't kill it like the previous one and all in it was pretty enjoyable.
