Label: Beyond
Author: various
Price: £9.95
Memory: 48K
Reviewer: Andy Moss

Beyond used to be known for quality software, but in recent times, it has rather let things go. Superman was the start of the slippery slide, then some internal changes, and a takeover by BT resulted in the company maintaining a very low profile.

This Christmas - with the release (maybe, maybe) of the much publicised Star Trek, which has had some very favourable murmurings - sees the start of the Great Beyond Fightback. A sort of Beyond-come-back-from-the- beyond scenario.

In the meantime, it has released a compilation tape of four games from its more illustrious past, and until Captain Kirk bursts upon our screens, that will have to do for now.

Of the four, Sorderons Shadow is certainly the weakest and I, personally, dislike it intensely. It is a graphic adventure that has a split screen. One for the graphics and one for a 'text' window from whence you give and receive information. The game objective is to kill Sorderon but you can only do this if you have the scroll of Dorian, which you can only get if you complete the nine tasks of the unnamed one, who shall remain nameless (or is that one of the nine tasks?) The game wasn't a success and I thought it lacked atmosphere.

Shadowfire and Enigma Force, which pioneered the use of icons in adventures are both great fun to play and are based around the Enigma team, who are a band of mercenaries who each possess different special abilities that need to be used in order to win the games.

Shadowfire - which was the original release chronicles the rescue of Ambassador Kryxix from within the spaceship of General Zoff. Capture the evil General and destroy the ship within one hour and forty game minutes. By the use of icons, which control the whole game, you have to deploy the Enigma team around the ship using weapons, picking locks and generally using your strategic prowess in the most effective way.

Enigma Force was an interesting sequel. Once again icons are used to drive the game, but this time the action unfolds on screen and you see the team members actually going about their work - something missing in Shadowfire. The story continues from the original. Your ship whilst carrying the Ambassador back, has come under fire from Zoff's forces. You crash-land on a strange planet and find that in the ensuing mayhem, the Ambassador has disappeared. Your mission is to locate his whereabouts (again!;.

Last, and by no means least, comes the marvellous Doomdark's Revenge, Mike Singleton's awesome sequel to Lords of Midnight. The gameplay is practically similar to LOM with the exceptions that this time you can enter some of the buildings you come across, and the locations have been increased to six thousand with forty-eight thousand different panoramic views! Very dramatic, very big and very good.

If you always fancied getting these games but could never raise enough dosh - now's your chance. I strongly recommend this compilation.

CHRISTMAS IS COMING AND BEYOND ARE READY WITH AN EARLY PREZZIE FOR STRATEGY AND ADVENTURE FANS.

Beyond Software
£9.95

Beyond have always been stronger on strategy/adventure than on arcade games (do I hear Superman being mentioned anywhere?), and now, just to tide us all over while we're waiting for Dark Sceptre and Star Trek to arrive, they've gathered together four of their best-known titles together onto a compilation tape.

The games assembled here have all had their fair share of acclaim - Doomdark's Revenge, Shadowfire and Enigma Force, with only Sorderon's Shadow as a slightly less well-known game.

It seems almost pointless to rehash Doomdark's Revenge, especially as Mike Singleton's 'landscaping' technique caused such a fuss when it first appeared in Lords of Midnight. But Doomdark took the technique even further, to produce a massive fantasy epic in which, playing the part of Prince Luxor and controlling various other characters and armies, you embark on a quest to free the land of Midnight from the threat of Shareth the Heartstealer. The game allows you to enter commands via single key entry (w=look, q=move), and the six thousand locations, 48,000 landscaped views and the various characters and objects that you have to deal with make for a vast and complex game that has been keeping hardened adventure addicts glued to their keyboards ever since it was first released.

A second tape in the package also includes a recording of a dramatised version of the story of Doomdark's Revenge - a must for lovers of purple prose.

THE SHADOW

Sorderon's Shadow is next on side one, and again there's a touch of the landscapes as you attempt to free the land of Elindor from the rule of the not-very-nice wizard, Sorderon.

If you can complete the nine tasks set by The Un-named One you may be able to cast the final spell that will end Sorderon's power. To complete these tasks you'll have to trek around Elindor collecting various magical objects from the characters who inhabit the land. The game is more of a conventional adventure than Doomdark, despite the landscaped graphics, and entry of commands is of the normal 'Get the sword, kill the oik' method rather than single key entry (though the command editor is fairly sophisticated). Sorderon's Shadow suffers a little bit because the landscaped graphics invite a not really appropriate comparison with Doomdark, possibly leading you to expect more than the game delivers. Underneath the visually attractive presentation, Sorderon's Shadow is a fairly good, but by no means outstanding adventure.

THE ENIGMA TEAM

Shadowfire and Enigma Force (both written by Denton Designs) are sensibly put together on side two of the tape, as they both feature the adventures of the Enigma team. Shadowfire caused a huge fuss when first released as it was one of the first games to feature a truly sophisticated icon control system. Both games put you in control of Zark, Syylk, Sevrina, and Maul of the Enigma team as they attempt to foil the plans of the galactic despot, General Zoff.

The challenge presented by the games lies in balancing the strengths and weaknesses of your team members and deploying them effectively against the forces controlled by Zoff. As with Doomdark, these games do not offer a single, clear cut path to victory and there's always room for improvement and new tactics. Shadowfire featured only the icon system and a static display of the characters and their positions but in Enigma Force this had been upgraded to an animated display in which you could actually see the characters move in response to your commands.

My only quibble about these games was that I found the icon system a bit fiddly to cope with, but there's no denying the difficulty of the challenge that the two games present you with or the quality of the games' design. With four games like this all on the same tape Beyond have produced a high-class compilation which, assuming you haven't already got most of the games, represents good value for followers of adventure and strategy games.