Producer: Ocean
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Choice Software

From the turmoil of interstellar war springs a splinter group which plans to destroy the ultimate weapon system - Macrogenetic Mutoids, known as Mutants.

The Mutants are contained in 15 test zones, which can be destroyed if the self-destruct components in each zone are collected and assembled in the 16th, the control zone. (When that's done you go on to the next level.)

You teleport to a test pen in Rainbow Warrior, a small one-man patrol ship. Each pen is surrounded by an energised surround which can destroy shipsm and guarded by Mutants which can destroy one of the ship's three lives.

The Mutants can be taken out using the ship's three weapons systems - slow, but big blasting missiles, rapid-fire low-level photon torpedoes, and barriers that provide a temporary shield. Only one system can be used at a time.

Components of the self-destruct device must be picked up and carried by teleporter out of the test zone and into the control zone. There you must find a way through its deadly walled corridors to the assembly point, where components can be deposited, the mechanism constructed and the universe saved as usual.

FACT: to Greenpeace environmentalists' ship sunk in New Zealand by French agents in 1985 was the ... Rainbow Warrior. Shome coinshidenshe shurely?

COMMENTS

Control keys: redefinable and preset (Q/A up/down, O/P left/right SPACE to fire) Joystick: Kempston, Interface II
Use of colour: well used throughout
Graphics: very attractive
Sound: little except for a few sparse spot FX
Skill levels: one
Screens: constantly scrolling

Though I managed to score 70 billion points in Mutants without any effort at all, literally (see future PLAYING TIPS…), the game has no addictivity at all! The graphics are nice, and the smooth ship movement is excellent, but 'there's no point having pretty graphics if the game is naff', as the old saying runs. Ocean obviously hasn't got a copy of Lloyd's Ludlovian Proverbs. Not recommended.
MIKE

The use of an icon system sets the scene for what promises to be a sophisticated game - especially as it's from a Denton Designs concept. The loading screen is very good and overall presentation is up to the Ocean standard; the graphics are striking and colourful. But the use of biological terms to describe each Mutant (a bit pointless, except to high-level biology students) and a rough icon-selection system seem to be hiding the fact the Mutants is basically a shoot-'em-up with a few extras chucked in. As shoot-'em-ups go it's playable but not compelling, and though it's a nice-looking game it's sadly lacking in gameplay.
ROBIN

My first reaction to Mutants was positive, but after a while I started to realise that for all its pretty graphics and icon-selections it's just a basic shoot-'em-up with a difficult control system. The graphics are good, clear and well-defined, especially on the icon choice/launch screen, but sound consists of deafening silence (save for the inevitable blasting effects). Mutants is a good game let down by limited and repetitive gameplay.
MARK

Ocean
£7.95

I've been out with some pretty weird types in my time but none so totally mutant as this collection of blobs, lines and what looks like animated dandruff. Throw in a handful of icons and what've you got? The newie from Denton Designs, that's what.

Or rather, that's not what because this is a conversion from the C64 and I have my suspicions that it lost out somewhere along the way. Either that or Denton has totally lost its once almighty touch.

It's a shoot 'em up combined with a minimum amount of strategy. Part one takes place a four by four grid where you try to collect fifteen parts of a self-destruct mechanism, which are reassembled in the sixteenth zone, at the top left hand corner.

Each of the zones is a sort of inter-stellar field, bounded by an electrified fence, but their content is far more deadly than cowpats. The mutant strains that inhabit the fields are lively little things, always running about (perhaps that's how they strained themselves) and making your life a misery.

There's only one type of weapon to deal with each strain - see. I said there was an element of strategy - and you can only kit up at the mother ship, between zones. If you don't get the right one I'd suggest you make like a parasite and flee.

The control zone takes the shape of a maze, and once again you have to be careful not to collide with its walls as you search for the re-assembly point. As it isn't free of nasties, which probably escaped from an ancient Pac-Man program, you'd do well to wait until you've collected enough bits to make the risk worthwhile.

An all-right sort of game, you might think. Well, it could be if not for the fact that it shows all the signs of a hasty conversion. Your ship's reactions are poor and its movement is sluggish. Collision detection appears to be erratic. ( We'll have none of that! Ed). I said erratic, not erotic, cloth-ears - particularly in the maze.

It also suffers from my least favourite game-feature ever - the instant death syndrome, which doesn't give you time to escape - and on the loss of your final life there's an immediate Game Over message with singular lack of finesse. Add to that the absence of music and all but the most primitive effects and there's little to make you want to continue playing.

In fact the game is so badly balanced that I didn't reach the second level, where you take on the mutant colony, and about which the instructions are strangely vague. It may be that this half is one of the all-time classic computer games... but unless the programmers mutated along the way, somehow I doubt it.

Label: Ocean
Author: Choice Software
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

An odd one this. Odd to play. Odd design history (Denton Designs thought up the idea but Choice Software programmed it) and odd concept. You blow away mutant germs with the good ship Rainbow Warrior. The germs are the result of weapons research by warmongering bad guys. The Greenpeace connections are obviously intentional which must make this about the most right-on game plot ever.

Like many Denton Designs game ideas this is a weird one. It is a good twenty minutes or so, even after reading the instructions, before you get the faintest idea what's going on. In fact the closest comparisons I can think of for the game are all by Jeff Minter - well known creator of bizarre plots.

After much reading and re-reading of the instructions I figured out it works like this: you select a region to enter, in each region is a germ species and an object you need to collect. If you get all the objects from 15 quadrants you can then take them to yet another section which is a sort of maze affair - somewhere in the middle of it is a sort of assembly plant where all the objects are assembled and you get to enter the next bit.

Getting each bit of the object means getting past the germs. This requires a bit of dexterous joystick juggling and the correct selection of weapon. There are three to choose from - laser-type things, bomb-type things and space mines. The problem is with some of the germs you have to choose the right weapon or... well you're going to look pretty silly and not save the federation.

The actual germ attack bits are the key to the game. Making the aliens an 'abstract' concept like germs means you can get away with all kinds of pleasing graphic effects and weird technical stuff. Some of the germs look like the night sky over Eastbourne, others look like comets and some look like second-rate laser shows. (Actually all of them look like out-takes from Colourspace, possibly Jeff Minter's most psychedelic game ever.)

Some germs sort of explode at you, others weave web-like patterns around you, some just sort of run at you. The end result is usually death. You can teleport between regions at will simply by finding the landing pad - so if you choose the wrong weapon - and haven't died yet, you can have another try.

It all looks quite nice - the germs are quite entertaining in a cosmic sort of way and there are icon-select systems all over the place.

The snag is actually the game doesn't hold the interest for long.

There is more to addictiveness than pretty patterns, but pretty patterns are all you'll find here.