Over the past few months, CRASH has tended to neglect the cheaper end of the software market - the ninety-niners - in favour of critical comment on all the full-price games. So in an effort to cover every single piece of software available for your Spectrum, CRASH has decided to introduce a new section, devoted entirely to budget software (games up to £5.00 in price); Budget Bureau. Each month, we'll pick out and feature our favourite cheapies, anything with 80%+ will receive a CRASH House Hit award! Each game still has its own overall rating (in brackets), so there shouldn't be a problem choosing the best games to buy. Only Blackbeard gets a House Hit this month. Read on, read on...
Only marginally better is Tomcat (25%) from Players. A vertically-scrolling shoot-'em-up, Tomcat has good, monochromatic graphics - with the singular exception of bullets which are simply small circles. Spotting them is exceptionally difficult which, together with the unoriginal gameplay, makes for an extremely difficult game.
Overall | 24% |
---|
BARGAIN BASEMENT
What's going cheap this month? (Make any bird jokes, and you're dead, Ed). Certainly not Marcus Berksquawk. (BLAM!!)
Players
£1.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann
One of the banes of my life has always been shoot 'em ups that are just so difficult you can't get anywhere at all. I bought one recently for the ST (spit) that everyone had said was amazingly groovy, but I never lasted for more than 20 seconds, so that was 20 nicker chucked down the drain. At least with the Speccy budget games you're only wasting a tenth of that price, but it's a pain nontheless.
Try as I might, I could get nowhere on this blasted game, much as it's beautifully drawn and animated, if a little slow. It's a vertical scroller in the Slapfight mode, with you flying low level over an automated island full of robots and gun emplacements firing at you. But it's so hard that in the end it seems a bit of a wasted opportunity. If, though, you really are a shoot 'em up whizz kid and you're finding everything else a touch on the peasy side, this is highly recommended. But I dunno - methinks even Jon-Boy Davies would have problems with this one.
Overall | 6/10 |
---|
THE COMPLETE YS GUIDE TO FLIGHT SIMS
Oh cripes. Whose idea was this? Couldn't we do it on something else? Nah, we promised. How about putting if off for another month? Or we could make JONATHAN DAVIS do it? Heh heh. Right, where's he got to? Ah ha!
Neeeeeow! Dakka dakka dakka! Kaboom! "Crikey, Ginger, pull up! Over."
"I can't! I think my flaps have gone a bit funny. Over." Neeeow! Boom!
"Bail out! Bail out! Over." Dakka dakka dakka. (Ricochet noises.)
"Er, okay then. Over and out."
Sorry about that, just trying to inject a bit of excitement into this thing because, let's face it, flight sims aren't exactly the most exciting bits of software around.
Or are they?
No, They're not. But there are loads of them about, and people keep buying them. Why is this? Perhaps we'd better investigate.
For thousands of years man has dreamt of flight... (Cut the crap, Ed) Erm, well, perhaps it's because they demand a bit more thought than your average arcade game. Fast reactions are all very well, but what about using your noddle occasionally? Keeping a plane in flight isn't just a matter of wobbling your joystick about a bit, which is the impression that lesser games give. You've got angles of attack to worry about, altitude, navigation, weapons systems, undercarriage... the list is endless. As are the manuals usually. And that's another thing. If you've never played one before you'll need to spend hours wading through one of these breeze-block tomes before you can even get off the ground.
Once you've got the thing up in the air though you're well away. With any luck there'll be lots of scenery to look at and plenty of enemy thingies to 'take out'. You might even like to indulge in a bit of aerobatics to pass the time. The one thing you should always keep an eye on though is the ground. Stay away from this at all costs. Unless you're landing, of course, which is another story altogether.
SO WHAT'S A FLIGHT SIM THEN, EH?
In compiling this guide I was faced with the usual problem - what exactly is a flight simulation? What are the criteria? Where do you draw the line? I decided to seek the advice of one of Europe's leading experts in the field of computer games.
"Er, Matt? (Cough.) Matt?' I ventured.
"Mmm?"
"Would you have said that, say, Fighter Pilot was a flight sim? Huh? Matt?" I enquired cheerily.
"Er, probably," he replied.
"How about Harrier Attack?"
"I expect it is, yes."
"Or Night Raider?"
"Um, look, I've got to go out. To the, er, shops. I'll see you later. Maybe."
Unperturbed. I decided to try Andy, but he didn't appear to hear me. I also tried ringing up a few friends. They all seemed to be out.
So it's all down to me then. Well, I reckon that really, in a flight sim, you ought to be in control of a plane of some sort. Ideally you'd get a 3D view out of the cockpit, but I'll be flexible and allow ones where you see the plane on the screen from the back (like ATF) and even ones where you see the view in 2D (from the top or something).
Another important guideline is the number of keys. Preferably there should be at least 2,452 of them, each with about three different functions. But, again, I'll allow a generous margin of error and set the bottom line at six.
And finally there's the manual. Obviously this should be as large and impenetrable as possible, with lots of incomprehensible acronyms that you have to keep looking up in the glossary at the back. A rough guide to length? Let's say 500-600 pages for a decent one or, if the game comes in an ordinary cassette box, an inlay card that folds out into a thin strip long enough to wrap round Matt's tummy at least two and a half times.
So now we know just what makes up a flight sim, let's take a look at a few…
RATINGS
Once again, the normally-so-versatile YS rating system doesn't really seem too appropriate here (Instant appeal? Addictiveness?). So what we've done is to come up with a revised system, specially tailored to meet the needs of today's flight sim. Let's have a nosey...
The View: Can you see anything nice out of the window? Or is it all just green and blue wiggly lines? And does the scenery glide around smoothly or jerk around like an Allegro with a dodgy clutch?
Realism: This can often be determined by the number of keys the game uses. So that's just what we've done. Counted 'em. As there are 40 keys on your basic Speccy, and each one can be doubled or even tripled up, the maximum comes out to exactly 100. Handy, eh?
Dakka Factor: Is there much to shoot? Or is it all a matter of map-reading, gauge-watching and other such nonsense? And once you've shot whatever it is, does it explode dramatically and plummet to the ground leaving a trail of smoke behind it? Or not?
Net Weight: A crucial part of any flight sim is all the junk that comes with it. So, adding together all the disks, maps, manuals, stickers and the box, what do the YS scales make of it? (All weights are, of course, approximate.) (In degrees.)
THE CHEAPO SIDE OF THINGS
You've got to give them credit - the budget people'll have a crack at anything. And flight sims are no exception. A full-pricey can take anything up to 18 months and a massive team of highly-trained programmers to develop, so what does your average beer-swilling cheapo programmer manage to come up with in the two weeks (evenings only) he's allotted? Let's brace ourselves and take a look.
Tomcat
Players
Encouraged by the name (a Tomcat, apart from being a feline of the male gender, is a rather spanky US Navy plane), and, in sheer desperation, I decided to give this one a whirl. Bad idea. It's a very ordinary vertically-scrolling shooter with one outstanding feature - it's completely impossible to get anywhere in. The aeroplane theme is a bit weak too, as you could easily replace it with a spaceship or something and not notice the difference. Still no joy then.
The View | 59% |
---|---|
Realism | 5% |
Dakka Factor | 50% |
Net Weight | 9% |
Overall | 36% |
Label: Players
Author: In-house
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jim Douglas
I know you're supposed to have reasonable eyesight to fly one of those American superfighters, but Players' Tomcat seems to require nothing short of E.S.P. of its pilots. I'll tell you why, shall I? Yes I shall. It's because you can't see what's shooting at you, you can't see what you're shooting at, you can't see where the hell you are and you can't see where you're going. It's like Beirut with fog.
First appearances imply that Tomcat is a rather special vertical shoot-out. While very much in the Flying Shark/Xenon mould, Tomcat has more complicated graphics and more going on. Well, that's what it seems like. Unfortunately, it turns out to be cluttered, confused and confusing.
The biggest problem is that you simply can't see what is going on. "Game Over" pops up for no evident reason. Especially observant spectators were sometimes able to point out the direction from whence the incoming bullet originated, but I was continually dumbfounded as to what was shooting me down.
The reason for this feeling of myopic paranoia is that the amount of things on the screen which are FILLED IN is virtually equal to the number of things which AREN'T, so it's like looking at one of those Embassy fag adverts which you couldn't possibly make out unless you were 100m away. While they were very clever adverts (This remark in no way implies that Sinclair User endorses smoking. It doesn't. Thankyou, Ken). I couldn't look at them for more than two minutes without feeling all giddy. (This remark in no way implies that Sinclair User endorses spinning ground until you feel giddy or using other hallucinatory aids like roundabouts - it doesn't. Thanks again. Ken)
So, what of the playability? Well, it certainly isn't the fastest game I've seen.
The screen scrolls four ways and your task is the standard one of blowing up gun emplacements and shooting down enemy fighters. You can collect extra weapons in the now rather tired fashion of flying over the tokens.
The bad guys fly in quite uninspiring patterns, but the bullets - THE BULLETS! God knows where they come from. I can't see them! Even when I've got backward firing missiles and tri-directional machine guns - which don't always fire - I was getting shot all over the place by mystery aliens with mystery invisible bullets.
On and on this thing goes, killing you with infuriatingly little explanation, and no hint of further excitement.
It's a pity that what could easily have been a very polished and entertaining budget game is horribly let down by poor presentation and slow action. Tsk Tsk.
Graphics | 50% |
---|---|
Sound | 60% |
Playability | 30% |
Lastability | 40% |
Overall | 46% |
All information in this page is provided by ZXSR instead of ZXDB