Producer: Durel
Retail Price: £8.95
Language: Machine code
Author: Simon Francis

Once again, your mission to is save life, the universe and everything. Alien forces have captured an anti matter conversion plant which supplies power to colonists in a planetary system. The aliens are threatening to turn the anti-matter plant onto 'self-destruct' - which would wipe out the entire planetary system and a couple of neighbouring stars as well - unless they receive unconditional surrender. Unconditional surrender is a fate worse than death, so it's up to you to travel across the surface of the asteroid on which the power plant is sited, infiltrate the alien enemy's positions and disable the anti-matter converter before it achieves Critical Mass.

You are in control of a rocket-propelled hover craft with high speed strike attack capabilities, according to the armaments manufacturer's sales blurb. The craft doesn't make contact with the ground, and thus avoids seismic detection, and is equipped with a powerful laser device. It's defended with a force field which protects the ship against collisions or alien attacks - but every collision with the force field drains a little more energy, and the field will eventually implode, destroying the ship if energy gets too low. Your energy status is displayed on a horizontal bar to the left of the screen and is replenished if you can avoid bumping into things or firing for a while. Too many collisions, or indeed too much rapid firing, and your ship turns into a collection of bouncing pixels...

For the benefit of less skilful pilots, a further protection device detects when your craft is about to implode, and ejects you before the event. All is not lost, however, for your character then uses the emergency jet pack to travel to a dome shaped energy pod where a new ship can be found. On the journey, the shipless pilot is unprotected and must avoid contact with rocks and other life forms which drain energy. An indicator, in the form of a large arrow, shows you the direction you should be travelling in, and in this phase you have to try to avoid large sandworm-like nasties that pop up out of the ground.

Your mission is to travel east with all speed, to the power unit. During the early phases of the game you will only encounter alien long distance raiders plus unfused mines, but as you progress through the zones you will encounter increasingly hostile opposition including fused and guided mines. Once you have travelled through all of the zones you will find yourself near the power plant. This is protected by a score of nasties such as amorphous clouds of molecular disorientation. To enter the power plant you will have to disable the force field gates by shooting the front of the turret that is between them. This is not easy and with the addition of the clouds you are likely to end up spinning off into the distance.

Once inside the plant you will find yourself being drawn into an energy beam - this you must destroy by shooting the centre of the pyramid shaped energy concentrator in the middle of the device. Failure leads to vapourisation for you and your craft.

The whole game is played against the clock, which ticks off the time remaining before Critical Mass is achieved. Points are collected for doing away with alien defences on the way to saving the universe.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Z/X left and right, Q accelerate, A fire, plus definable key option
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2 and Downsway
Keyboard play: very responsive
Use of colour: only two colours and black used but attribute problems are avoided
Graphics: good and detailed but at times the screen gets a bit blank
Sound: limited during play but nice tune to start off with
Skill levels: 3
Screens: vast scrolling area

Remember Scuba Dive way back in issue 2 of CRASH? Even then we said that Durell had set new standards in graphics; now they have gone one better and produced a game that has great graphics, good sound and compelling game play. Critical Mass takes the form of a fast action shoot em up that is totally addictive. The movement of your craft reminds me very much of Vortex's Cyclone where you have to wrestle with the controls when you encounter a problem. The sound is pretty good for a Spectrum with great blowing up effects and a nice tune at the start of the game. The inclusion of an automatic eject is quite a good idea, though the game could have been made a bit more exciting if you had to operate the ejection system yourself. If you're into shoot em ups, then you couldn't do much better than buy this.

This struck me as being pretty boring when I first encountered it - a touch of the 'nice graphics, shame about the game syndrome'. On further playing I started to discover things deeper within the game which were highly original and excellent. The graphics on this are of a very high standard, and the scrolling is something of a miracle for a Spectrum. If you like shoot em ups then you can't go wrong with this one, it's one of the best in my memory.

The music on this game in the opening screens is great but when you start the game the first thing to strike you are the amazing graphics, which are so detailed. The only problem that I could see was that the screen tended to empty at times. Some of the graphics are a touch on the small side, but this doesn't detract from the overall impression of excellence. The thing that really surprised me was the handling of the craft; the inertial effects produced by hitting rocks and firing your laser are wonderful. They are some of the best on any Spectrum game that I've played. Controlling the craft adds an extra dimension to the game that, when combined with the graphics and frantic game play, makes for an excellent game.

Dougie: This is the biz! Critical Mass is one of those all too rare games that combines some of the tried and tested methods of a golden oldie. Asteroids, with plenty of new and refreshing elements.

Far out (Man? Ed) In the galaxy, at the outer edge of man's expansion, a colony of humans is under attack - only this time the aliens are being very sneaky about their subterfuge.

Now there's none of the old full frontal onslaught - after aeons of playing computer games we humans have learned how to handle that! No, they've sneaked in the back door and captured the colony power supply that's located on an asteroid. It's from there that they're threatening self-destruction unless the colonists capitulate immediately. Stay calm - help is at hand!

You have to penetrate the alien defences on the asteroid and disable the anti-matter plant before it can reach Critical Mass. That's the only way of ensuring that the asteroid and everything else within a few billion light years of it, doesn't disappear down an extremely large black hole.

You hover above the barren surface of the asteroid in your land skimmer - a tricky task on its own as it's a ground effect vehicle and so extremely hard to manoeuvre. Plus, you must also defend yourself against marauding alien ships, look out for rocks and watch out that you don't run over the land mines. If your ship is hit, it'll eject you just before it's blown to smithereens, so you've a chance to reach a replacement pod. But keep a sharp eye out for the Dune-style worm creatures that come wrigglin' and writhin' out of the sand on the trail of breakfast.

The graphics and playability of this game are superb, making it well worth the money. 9/10

Publisher: Durell
Price: £8.95
Memory: 48K
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair, Downsway, Protek

A desolate asteroid houses an advanced anti-matter conversion plant, set up by an outlying system of the Terra Federation.

A group of aliens has penetrated its defences and has threatened to destroy the plant, turning it into a black hole which would suck thousands of inhabited planets into its colourless void. Your mission is to disable the plant before it achieves critical mass.

At the start of the game a 3D representation of a desert world is panned across the main display window until the dome-shaped hover pod launcher comes into view.

Using joystick or keyboard you must orientate the pod and then press the accelerator. The joystick is easier to use as a simple one way movement is enough to control the craft.

There are five zones through which you must travel. In the first zone you will encounter giant worms and dust balls. In the second zone you will have to contend with alien hover pods as well.

Your pod remains intact while its shield has enough power, but bumping into obstacles and being hit drains its resources. When your shields drop the pod will implode, and you must follow directions to the nearest pod launcher to collect another craft.

If you manage to get into the final zone the walls of the power plant soon appear. To enter you must disable the protective wall and destroy the source of the energy beam.

The desert world portrayed in Critical Mass bears a remarkable similarity to Frank Herbert's Dune. Even the hover pods looked like the winged ornithopters portrayed in the film.

MACHINE: CBM 64/Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Durell
PRICE: £8.95

Oh no! An outlying system of the Terran Federation has set up an advanced anti-matter conversion plant on an old asteroid - and some dastardly aliens have taken it over and are threatening to destroy not only the asteroid but the entire galaxy as well.

Hmmm! So who do the colonists send for? The Bug Hunters? The A-Team? Mike Hammer? No - they send for YOU.

It's your task to pilot your tiny, but well armed rocket-craft, into the centre of the enemy occupation and destroy the anti-matter plant before the aliens can discover their evil plot.

You begin the game in a pod which houses your craft. It opens up in a nicely animated sequence to reveal your craft. You take off in search of danger and adventure.

The craft is very tricky to control. But it is protected by a force shield. So you have a bit of protection while you're learning to pilot it.

There are the alien defence systems to contend with too - some appear as sponge like balloons, others ride in ships similar to your own.

You have a little jump pack which you can use to guide your pilot to the next pod us the pointer at the bottom of screen. Your next craft await there.

The graphics on the Spectrum version are sparse, giving a sort of half finished appearance to the game.

Durell have come up with a nice idea for a game - and included some good features. But the unfinished look of graphics and the control of craft knock a few points off the final marks.

Spectrum
Durell Software
Arcade Safari
£9.95

Trashed my strike craft in a rock outcrop - anybody knows what that means out here. As the wreckage bounced away from me I punched the button on my jet pack and got sky-side just as the sand-worm reared its ugly head a few feet from me. Back to the pressure-dome for a new ship - losing your no-claims bonus is bad enough but when aliens have infiltrated into your power-plant in a bid to make it meltdown the local star-system you don't worry so much about that kind of thing.

Brilliant graphics and an original enough game concept programmed by Simon Francis. Durell have a real winner here. The screen shows an aerial 3D view of a barren desert landscape, cheerful tunes play in the background (if you can hear them on your Spectrum). Fly your surface skimmer towards the right hand side of the screen. Try not to hit any rock outcrops or UFOs otherwise you spin off like a drunken dodgem driver. Too many smashes and your ship blows up - this effect is particularly good with all the bits bouncing all over the place. An arrow at the base of the screen indicated where the nearest pressure dome is. Get into the vicinity and you are sucked in.

The dome then bifurcates and releases you in your new skimmer. Paul Atreides would be at home on this planet since giant Dune-style sandworms rear their ugly heads and reduce your energy if you bump into them. Dull it isn't. You can shoot back at attacking vehicles although many of the phenomena which assault you are indestructible and very very persistent. A swarm of diamond-shaped objects is generally the finishing element for people trying to penetrate the outer wall of the power plant, where all the real fun with the enemy counter-attack vehicles begins. Excellent and also available for Commodore.