Durell
£9.95
This has got to be a better stocking filler than Bet Lynch! Combat Lynx, Critical Mass, Turbo Esprit and Saboteur all for the price of one - swoon! it makes your trigger finger twitch just thinking about it.
All these megagames charted, all of 'em winners. If you've spent the last eighteen months begging, borrowing and swopping trying to get hold of these titles, now you can relax.
Most of you out there in Speccy land will be familiar with these Hall of Fame Classics. Combat Lynx combines the cool brain power of an army war game with the pulse-propelling thrills of a flight simulator. Your mission not-so-impossible is to appropriately arm your chopper and successfully defend six bases without having your three lives terminated. With its strong strategy element requiring practice and forethought Lynx is the slowest but certainly not the least satisfying of the four.
Critical Mass is the nearest to a straight cosmic arcader. To start, make an immediate eyes-right dash to the end zone to eliminate a turret between the force gates, avoiding everything from rocks to aliens to roving mines to clouds of disorientation - and that's just for starters. It's a game where you literally daren't, can't even, stay still. If your rocket-hover implodes, can you and your jet pack still avoid the Dune-like sand worms, find a new craft, infiltrate the enemy positions and disable the anti-matter plant before Critical Mass is achieved? Gulp! Who knows? You'll just have to play it and find out.
Turbo Esprit. What can you say? Urble, darble goobery doo! Hackman and McQueen practice on it before performing their cunning stunts, the Ed before driving to work! it has the thrills and spills of a city car-chase-race. But it's not all spinal cord reflex. With the map aids you can plan your interception of the drug smugglers, trying to avoid the pedestrians and one way strips before ultimately cornering the drug baron.
Saboteur turns you into a Ninja - a martial arts-trained mercenary whose job is to break into a warehouse and escape by helicopter from the roof with a disk of secret info. But it's no secret that this game links the skills of other martial arts game with the cunning of a mazer (mapping is essential to get through those rooms and sewers - see the YS June issue) and the beat-the-clock tension of an arcade thriller. And remember - zero points for mashing the mutts.
Only Beethoven's Quartets beat this fun foursome - Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!
Graphics | 8/10 |
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Playability | 9/10 |
Value For Money | 10/10 |
Addictiveness | 9/10 |
Overall | 9/10 |
Label: Durell
Author: various
Price: £9.95
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor
An excellent pack with all the games included being at least reasonable and some actually extremely good.
Titles are Combat Lynx, Critical Mass, Turbo Exprit and Saboteur.
Saboteur is a sort of cross between Exploding Fist and Impossible Mission. It has simplified ninja moves: jump, duck, kick, punch, but aside from beating people up there is a fairly complex plot involving blowing up enemy bases and collecting secret information. Not graphically astounding but fair.
Turbo Esprit is a nifty car game, with the basic idea of driving as fast as possible around city streets and steering to avoid things like roadworks. All this is part of a plot involving chasing drug smugglers. The simple objective is to catch their car by 'bumping' it and arrest them alive. If that proves tiresome you can just shoot them if they're in range. The actual driving part of the game is reasonable effective although there is no real sense of 'turning' as such.
Combat Lynx is a helicopter simulation, not too complex in the flight controls and with (thankfully) a weapon's system. This means destruction. There are missions and bases to land at and messages but the fact that there are six different weapons systems should be all the information you need. A good choice for people not quite up to the sophistication of Digital's Tommahawk.
Critical Mass is a multi- directional scrolling space game. You control a little space ship and scroll around a planet that seems to have been stolen from Dune (some pretty impressive worms which leap out of the sand) and hurtle around through some pretty rocky terrain looking for an anti matter plant to disable. First appearances are a bit deceptive on this one. It looks rather impressive on screen but isn't such good fun to play. Worth some attention if you haven't seen it however.
Overall | 4/5 |
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FOUR TOP NOTCH GAMES FOR THE PRICE OF ONE FROM DURELL.
Durell
£9.95
Dour of Durell's best known games are now available in a single twin cassette pack. Now for the price of one game you can fly a deadly Lynx helicopter in Combat Lynx, drive a Turbo Esprit in a city centre car chase, infiltrate an enemy security base in Saboteur and disable an antimatter plant in Critical Mass.
COMBAT LYNX
The action begins on the launch pad as you arm your combat Lynx helicopter for the mission ahead. Your job is to protect and terry troops between a maximum of six bases (depends on game level) while fighting the planes, helicopters, tanks and gun emplacements of the enemy forces.
Through your controls you must plot the positions of the bases and the approaching forces and defend the ones most at risk while keeping the others fully supplied.
This isn't an easy game to learn with over 30 key controls to perfect but it is still one of the best combat flight simulators.
TURBO ESPRIT
Driving your Lotus Turbo Esprit around one of four city centres at 150mph isn't easy especially when you're supposed to be the good guy and avoid mowing down pedestrians and other drivers. Meanwhile the bad guys are operating a drugs ring and you must find and catch the armoured supply car and the four pick-up cars before the hit cars find you.
Unfortunately, you must stop at traffic lights and observe other driving laws while the drug dealers will shoot anyone in an attempt to get away.
Tracking down your targets is easy using the scanner that reports their position which you can follow on your map but look out for warnings about hit cars approaching you. These try to gun you down from behind so if you get a warning you'll need to perform a speedy manoeuvre to get behind them!
An excellent car chase game but don't be surprised if your penalties (for crashing, running lights, shooting innocent people) are greater than your score.
SABOTEUR
As a change of pace Saboteur has you creeping around a warehouse that the villains are using as a central security station. Your mission as an ace mercenary is to infiltrate the warehouse and find a disk that contains the names of all the rebel leaders.
Naturally you're an expert martial artist as the game was released when kung fu games ruled.
Now it is looking a little dated but has survived mainly due to the size of the warehouse you must explore and the choice of weapons you can find and use on the patrolling guards. The guards also have dogs that constantly snap of your heels and drain your energy.
Eventually you should make your way to the roof where a helicopter waits to rescue you.
CRITICAL MASS
My pick of the bunch is Critical Mass that gives you just ten hours gametime to travel through the five zones to reach the power plant before it explodes.
Naturally this isn't going to be easy, as the enemy that invaded the planet and caused all the trouble, attempt to destroy your rocket propelled hovercraft. This is protected by a force field that is weakened by any collisions with the rocks that strewn the surface or by enemy fire. If this gives way your ship dramatically explodes around you leaving you hovering above a pile of rubble.
If you're lucky you can hover to a replacement pod and get another ship to continue your mission. If you're unlucky you'll be eaten by one of the Dune style giant worms that rear out of the planet to chomp you.
Should you manage to reach the base you then have to find a way in past the fused mines, disorientation clouds and protective wall before you can have a shot at the energy concentrator to close down the reactor.
Each game separately is well worth playing with; my favourite being Combat Lynx and Critical Mass but with four hits for the price of one, it just has to be a monster hit.
All information in this page is provided by ZXSR instead of ZXDB