BARGAIN BASEMENT

Come on down! The Pryce is right! (Groan - Ed) Once again Nat Pryce single-handedly guides us through the treacherous world of the budget game.

Players
£1.99
Reviewer: Nat Pryce

Yet another gang of inter-galactic master criminals has planted a bomb in a nuclear power station; this time the criminals are General Ironside and his Metal Army and the power station is in Slough. An attempt at being witty there, I think; I suppose they're half-way there!

Anyway, what it all boils down to is a pretty big (from what I've been able to explore), very hard platform/maze/shoot 'em up in the best budget tradition. Though there are scores of games like this around, very few do it better than Metal Army (Koo-er! eh?). This will keep you occupied for quite some time, so you won't have to resort to looking for smutty double entendres in YS reviews for a while.

Label: Players
Author: Mark Haden, David Wright
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Cor blimey, strike a light, it's a mug's game innit? You work long hours, you get no holidays or pay, you stand a good chance of being blown to pieces, and the only job satisfaction you get is if you manage to catch some squirty little superhero and squash him into little pieces. I dunno, when I signed on as a guardian robot I expected action, adventure, travel, fame, but what do I get? Trudge, trudge, trudge, left, right, left, right, game after game, and I don't even get my name on the cover.

Take this Metal Army gig. General ironside promised us world domination when we signed up to take over Slough nuclear power station. No mention that Harry Chainsaw, freelance bounty hunter and part-time window cleaner (Are you sure about this? - GT), would be wading through us with his thermoplasma servo-blaster.

The bomb's planted, the timer's running, all we have to do is strut around doing the usual, "You-will-beexterminated," bit. Cinch. At least the surroundings are nice; plenty of corridors, elevator platforms, security doors, pipework and booby traps, just the sort of thing we like. You might call 'em, ooh, nice graphics.

I'm good mates with the giant bouncing ballbearings. The tinmen and the domeheads work pretty well together, popping out of tubeways and chasing down old Harry. It's such a laugh crushing him just as he tries to pick up a security pass, or catching him against a locked door, or sandwiching him as he tries to refuel his blaster from a power point. How we laugh as he evaporates in a puff of steam.

And Harry's a bit clumsy, and he's quite likely to blunder into spigots discharging coolant gas, electric charges or radioactive fuel. In fact, it's pretty difficult to get past the first screen, where four gas spouts in a row cook him to a crisp most of the time. We can just sit eating our sandwiches and waiting for him to blunder along. The big problem is that it's so quiet in here; just the odd "plip plip plip" when one of me mates gets melted. Not a jot of music. The management just don't seem to want us to have a good time.

So if I make it through this in one piece, I'm going for a more interesting job. Traffic warden, or door-to-door carpet cleaning executive. Anything for a bit of variety.