Frenzied arcade action without any bullets!

Producer: Firebird
Out of Pocket: £7.95 cass
Author: Graftgold

Well presented, detailed graphics and animation, excellent sound effects and fun to play. That's Intensity. What more can say? (quite a bit if you want to get payed this month - Ed). Oh OK, Intensity is one of those games that's so simple it's brilliant.
Perhaps I'd better tell you about it.

Set up to explore new planets for life forms and precious minerals, the Terran (Earth to everyday folk) Exploration Company is under attack by strange hostile aliens. The only course of action is to evacuate the spaceship Canis Major.

You control a skimmer which hovers around the screen, destroying alien spores by colliding with them. When fire is pressed, the drone craft postioned on the surface of the spaceship flies toward the skimmer's location - get out of the way or a lethal collision results!

The point of moving the position of the drone is that from time to time, colonists emerge from airlocks, hoping to make it to the drone before they run out of oxygen.

However the many different one-screen levels throughout the game are littered with walls and other obstructions which cannot be crossed by the escaping colonists. Some buildings are so tall that even the skimmer cannot fly over them.

Those pesky aliens are pretty harmless in Spore form, but here's the catch - they mutate! if a Spore finds a suitable landing site it can turn into a Stalker and hop along the surface intent on catching a colonist. Should this happen, a dangerous Nuclon fireball is produced which tracks and collides with the drone, causing much damage. Stalkers may also change into homing Trackers via the intermediate, chrysalis-like Podule stage.

Still with me? - I told you it was simple.

The space station consists of five rows of platforms named after the first five Greek letters (alpha to epsilon for classics students). A letter on the screen exit determines which row you progress to after leaving the current screen. This letter changes depending on how many men have been rescued.

After leaving a screen, you're presented with a menu of skimmers and drones which can be bought, using resource units collected during play. Three types of skimmer and drone are available. The higher the class, the more damage they can take before exploding. Also, the better skimmers can fly higher and faster - some screens can only be successfully completed with the top-class alpha.

A certain amount of strategy is required to decide which craft to buy, although you can ask the computer for a suggestion, but watch out - it charges one resource unit for this valuable information! The Graftgold team have converted this original concept to the Spectrum in great style. Well-defined (and colourful) graphics grace every level - and the sound's not bad either. Although puzzling at first, Intensity will have you hooked in no time - a superb, original concept brilliantly executed.

PHIL [92%]

THE ESSENTIALS
Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair, Cursor
Graphics: beautifully detailed and surprisingly colourful graphics viewed from overhead
Sound: snazzy tunes on the front end of all versions plus some atmospheric in-game FX

Although Intensity is a simple collect-'em-up, it's nonetheless a very playable one.

Keeping one eye of drone as it collects stranded colonists, and the other on the marauding aliens, (who regularly change guises, and so must be watched like a hawk) takes a bit of getting used to.

The meanies swarm around the screen causing as much trouble as possible. But you're brave (or is that foolish), so they don't worry you. Frazzle their reptilian hides, turn them into charred lumps, be tough, but search out Intensity, because it's a damned enjoyable game.
MARK [91%]

As the action hots up it can get very intense (no groans, he means it -Ed). There's no difference between the 128K and 48K versions that I could see. Even though the tune and FX sound 128Kish they were also found on the 48K machine. Intensity is fast, furious and full of fun, excellent.
NICK [90%]

Firebird
£7.95 cass
Reviewer: Jonathan Davies

It's not often that you find a game as close to perfection as this one. In fact, it's so hard to fault Intensity that for once I don't think I'll bother. So here goes: the world's first totally, utterly positive review...

What we have here is the newie from Graftgold, the guys behind Uridium. Like most of their other stuff it's highly original, so I'm going to have to explain it from scratch. Let's start with the plot, just for a change.

One of Earth's colonies has come under attack from some fiendsh aliens and the colonists on board have decided to abandon ship, as the space station is rapidly disintegrating. Their only escape route is via one of five shuttles, and these can only be reached with a drone craft, which in turn is guided by you in your skimmer.

Allow me to elaborate. The colonists leap out of their little holes in the ground one at a time. It's your job to make sure the drone craft is in the right place to pick them up, by marking landing spots for it. It will then fly in more or less a straight line to that place, so you'll have to make sure it doesn't hit any walls, or aliens on the way.

Ah yes, the aliens. They had to come into it somewhere, didn't they? When an alien first appears it's relatively harmless. But if left long enough, it'll gradually mutate into various gruesome nasties which could do untold damage to the drone. It's therefore wise to dispose of them as fast as possible by bashing into them with your skimmer. If the drone takes too many hits it'll blow up, along with any colonists on board. But once you've picked up enough peeps, move the drone to the exit and you'll be able to jump to the next screen.

The way the playing area is organised is t'riffic. The map is split into five levels, each of varying difficulty, which are all split into sixteen screens. The last screen contains the shuttle to freedom. As well as jumping to the next screen in the row, you can also jump between the five levels for a bit of added spice. The route you take at the end of each screen is determined by the number of scientists you pick up before exiting, and this means there are endless ways of finishing the game, some easy, some appallingly hard. The first person to map it all out deserves a knighthood!

As you can probably imagine, the graphics are all excellent. Being static rather than scrolling, an incredible amount of detail has been packed into each screen, and the animation is stunning! And as you need to keep track of both the skimmer and the drone, along with all the aliens, colonists and other things, you'll need at least 47 eyes glued to various parts of the screen if you're going to stand any kind of a chance.

But if all that sounds complicated, you ain't heard nothin' yet. As you rescue each colonist a little R-shaped sprite pops onto the screen. Pick it up and you gain one resource unit. After each screen, or after losing a life, you're given the opportunity to order new skimmers and drones. Naturally the best ones are the most expensive, and also take longer to deliver.

Even with the great graphics and the multitude of things to do, Intensity could (a one in 40,000,000 chance, admittedly) have turned out to be a bit of a cucumber. But nope. What really makes it compulsive is the way that all its elements work together to keep you totally absorbed. The fast, polished gameplay ties it all together nicely and as there are so many different ways to get to the end it'll take you weeks to explore all the possibilities, starting with the piddlingly peasy-weasy ways and building up to the meanest route, but with the highest score.

To tell the truth, I'm totally hooked! Intensity is a definite contender for Game Of The Year (yep, another one) and a compulsory purchase.

Label: Firebird
Author: Steve Turner
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Whatever has that lovely, lovely Andrew Braybrook been up to since his last effort, Morpheus, failed to appear on the Spectrum? Well, he's been working on intensity, and now it's finished, and, er, this is a bit of a problem.

The problem is that while I can see exactly what he was trying to do, and while some of the fluffy bunnies at SU think it's a jolly good game, and while it's full of spiffy programming and nice things, I just don't think it adds up to a fun experience. The basic problem is that it seems to have been designed by deciding to take things out, rather than to put things in.

Though the background graphics look very much like those of the marvellous Uridium, the first thing to bear in mind is that they DON'T SCROLL. What? A non-scrolling shoot-'em-up? inconceivable! And there's worse to come. There's no shooting either! While you have a nice cup of tea to recover from the shock, I'll explain.

The plot hinges around a development of a control system from Morpheus. Your task is to pilot a skimmer and its rescue drone, lifting colonists from a series of space platforms besieged by aliens. Your skimmer moves in a circular manner under joystick control, and you can land on the surface of the platform by pressing the fire button. When you land, this summons your rescue drone, which whizzes across the platform towards you.

You must then move pretty smartish to get out of the way before the drone slams into you, and you explode into a zillion particles.

Meanwhile the colonists are making their way across the platform towards the drone. They appear as small spheres, and the aliens attack them as they run. You must use your skimmer to intercept the aliens, otherwise they will cause the colonists to mutate into human bombs. Get one of these in your drone and it's goodnight viewers.

As you progress, the layout of the platforms becomes more complex, with more gaps, causeways and obstacles. It therefore becomes harder to land your skimmer near enough to the colonists for the drone to zoom in and rescue them. Once you have rescued all the colonists from each level, a flashing signal tells you that you can make for the take-off pad and fly to the next platform. By choosing different pads, you can choose different routes through the maze of platforms. Rather than having to complete every single platform, all you have to do is pick a path from one side of the grid to the other. A status screen between levels shows you where you are.

Of course, it's more complicated than that. For a start, there are different types of drones and skimmers. By picking up flying R symbols you accumulate credit which allow you to select better equipment on the purchase screen. All the skimmers are armed with rotating cutters with which they can destroy aliens, but the Alpha and Beta versions can climb over higher obstacles than the simple Gamma. Incidentally, the impression of changing height is very nicely created by the use of shadowing on the sprites. The same sort of variations apply to the drones, so you must always bear in mind what kinds of obstacles can and cannot be negotiated. Sometimes you have to land and "call" a drone several times to steer it around obstacles. The danger here is that alien Trackers will home in on you if you stay on the surface too long. Other aliens include Spores, which are easy to destroy if you get them before they touch down; Stalkers, which can leap small gaps; Podules, which are intermediate stages between Stalkers and Trackers, and are vulnerable for a short time; and Nuclons, which are dangerous fireballs resulting from a stalker catching a colonist. They will destroy or downgrade your ships if they hit them, as will the Trackers.

In the buying phase the cost of new vehicles is shown in RUs (Resource Units) and you can order as many vehicles as you can pay for. There's an "auto" option which recommends a best buy, but the better the equipment, the longer it takes to be constructed. So, what do we end up with? A fast-moving, cleverly programmed and complex game, with an original plot, fine touches and a polished appearance. But, Uridium it's not.

Firebird, £7.95cs, £12.95dk
C64 version reviewed Issue 14 - ACE rating 642

The graphics have come across well and look quite good in monochrome. The gameplay too is enjoyable, but like the 64 version tends to be monotonous.

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £7.95

The exploration and mining space station base, Canis Major went under attack whilst in orbit around Sirius. The crew are in danger from hull-eating aliens. The only course of action is to rescue the colonists in a drone ship and take them to a shuttle at the far end of the station.

Intensity consists of go screens, arranged in five groups or layers of 16 platforms. Colonists emerge from airlocks and have limited time to board the drone.

Up to 15 can be rescued from a single screen - the next platform you face depends on the number you save before using the flashing exit, so some strategy is necessary.

Each time a colonist reaches the drone, an 'R' (a Resource Unit) drifts around the screen, these are collected until a new, preferably better skimmer or drone can be afforded.

The evermore powerful, mutating aliens kill colonists and damage the drone, space station and even the skimmer. It is advisable to destroy them while they remain vulnerable.

At a reduced screen size. John Cumming, the graphics designer for this version, has included a lot of fine detail. Generally monochromatic, a few highlights of colour improve the presentation of the shaded platforms. If anything, graphical presentation is higher than that of the C64, including scrolling stars in the background. There is more action than in the original, although this does not make it any more difficult.

Jazzy title screen music and good effects round oil an excellent conversion.