Producer: The Power House
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Jon Paul Eldridge

All was peace and calm on the surface of your tranquil planet - until the evening sky turned scarlet with the lights of enemy ships. You rush to the spaceport and take to the skies in the people's only weapon - an advanced laser equipped spacecraft known as the Freedom Fighter.

Combat takes place in deep space against a vertically scrolling background of stars. Waves of aliens swoop down firing a hail of fatal bullets. Contact with either results in the immediate loss of one of three lives. As play progresses, the enemy releases concussion bombs which make their way slowly down the screen. The resulting explosion destroys the Freedom Fighter, regardless of its position on the screen. Collection automatically activates disarmament of each bomb.

In the wake of each group of alien craft flies a missile-belching mothership. To destroy it and gain an extra life, persistent volleys of laser fire are required. The sky clears temporarily and the fighter flies on into space, one level closer to his ultimate goal: the preservation of a serene and peaceful world.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Kempston
Graphics: very small and basic - bad use of colour
Sound: short synthesised tunes and effects

The most impressive aspect of Freedom Fighter is its title screen. A finely drawn portrait of the hero promises an exciting and possibly sophisticated game. A single press of the fire button and all your illusions crumble. Tiny multi-coloured diamonds pass for space invaders, purple blotches impersonate missile fire, and supposedly fatal concussion bombs sputter and die in an anticlimactic fizzle of flame. Collision detection is less than accurate and your powerful laser dribbles tiny spurts of feeble ammunition. With such limited weapons, poor playability, and primitive graphics there's absolutely no compulsion to play on. Avoid.
KATI [20%]

How could anyone in their right mind ever purchase the rights to publish such tommyrot? The Power House are supposed to be relaunching their Image and so on but Freedom Fighter does nothing to improve their image in the market place. How can anyone be expected to respect a company that constantly produces below average software? Freedom Fighter is another in the long list of games with poor graphics, terrible use of colour and no playability. The collision detection is absolutely appalling - character collision, not pixel. If only the programmer had spent as long on the game as he did drawing his self-portrait on the title screen we might have had a fun little game.
PAUL [18%]

BARGAIN BASEMENT

And down in the Cheapies Emporium this wee (nothing over £3 considered), is Bristol's answer to Billy Idol, Nat Pryce!

Power House
£1.99
Reviewer: Nat Pryce

Freedom Fighter is another of those dire games that Power House always seems to release. This game has nothing going for it. has terrible sound, poor graphics and is completely unplayable.

The problem is that your ship is huge and slow, whole the nasties are very small, move very fast and fill the screen with bullets which you simply can't avoid. If you manage to fight your way past all that, there's a huge wobbly mother ship, which looks like a dismembered jelly fish, to destroy.

Freedom Fighter is so bad that I doubt even the most warped of shoot am up addicts will like it. Avoid this like the plague.

Label: Powerhouse
Author: Jon Paul Eldridge
Price: £1.99
Memory: Plus 3
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Freedom Fighter is a dead standard Galaxians-type space shoot-'em-up, which makes one wonder why the illustration shows MIG 21s bombing Moscow. Your spaceship sits at the bottom of the screen, shooting down dancing aliens, avoiding bombs and catching concussion weapons which will otherwise kill you when they reach the bottom of the screen.

At the end of each wave you'll face a fast-moving, bomb dropping mothership. The movements of the aliens are jerky, the collision detection is very suspect, and the sampled speech is probably the worst I've ever heard. "Get ready" sounds like "Geek Eddie", so I kept looking for this Eddie character so I could "geck" him.

If as much attention had been put into the game as had been applied to producing the digitised portrait of the programmer on the loading screen - it would STILL have been plop. Avoid like eczema.