Producer: Esteem More Than Equal
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £2.99
Language: Machine code
Author:

Worlds at War is an arcade game in three sections - or 'chapters' as the software house prefers to call them.

Part One - sorry, Chapter One is called 'Exodus From the Red Planet', which should tell the astronomers among you that this game is set on, and then off, Mars. The rise in ground temperature has driven the Martians underground. But even here, all is not safe. Toxic fumes seeping up from the planet's core is causing the supporting pillars to collapse. So the Martians must collect all the parts of a ship together to escape. These parts together with fuel and food are dotted about the caverns of the complex and must be assembled on the surface by the character you control. Lifts communicate between the three underground levels and the surface. Only one object at a time may be carried and you must avoid the pets, driven mad by lack of water, and the toxic sand seeping down through the root.

Chapter Two 'The Journey' is set in space. The fuel ship is ahead of the main passenger ship, but the guiding computer does not work properly, so the target cursors have to be moved manually

Chapter Three - 'The War Begins' sees us back in familiar territory - CRL Land. The ship has landed on a common on Earth. Before the ship has even cooled, the earthlings are attacking with cannon.. .

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q/A up/down and pickup/drop, O/P left/right, SPACE to jump and hover (use energy)
Joystick: none
Keyboard play: responsive and well laid out
Use of colour: very good
Graphics: weird, could be better, but weirdness gets in the way sometimes
Sound: continuous
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 3
Screens: Special features:

What first strikes you about this game is the use of colour. It has been used quite well but the graphics are 'strange' - they're not what I would call 'definite' graphics - more of an old and mystical type with no straight edges and no definite lines. Collecting the parts of the ship is quite a task, I can assure you. It's also highly frustrating, and eventually just drives you up the wall. I gave up on this game long before I should have. To tell the truth I just ran out of patience. In other words - no way was it appealing. It says on the blurb for screen two that it, 'has the most realistic cockpit display ever seen' - can this really be true? It's interesting and different - true, but hardly what I would call the most realistic. Overall, I wouldn't even pay a pound for this game.

When I watched someone else playing this game, I thought it was confusing. When I played this game I found it was confusing. The reason for this is the extraordinary looking graphics which are - well, dust-smothered. Also, it takes a while to comprehend exactly what is happening on the screen. The game itself is rather tedious for some reason that I can't exactly put my finger on - it just didn't grab me at all.

Worlds at War sounds very good when you read about it, and at its low price - three different games in one, sounds like good value. But oddly, the thing doesn't really work. It all looks very different, but the graphic characters are small in a busy screen, and everything gets lost. I did like the medieval look of the graphics however. In general it isn't a user-friendly program either. I can't say it's exactly bad, but it isn't all that good.