CODE OF THE WARRIOR

Memory: 48K
Price: £8.95

Before your very eyes the bestial forces of the Darklords have destroyed your monastery and friends. Revenge is in your heart but you must first reach the capital and warn the king of the impending onslaught. War and danger will bedevil your every step.

Flight from the Dark is the computer version of the Arrow single role-play book and the program is packaged with it for double enjoyment and references. The program contains new situations but follows the original plot and the screen display will show if you are dealing with a section of the book by indicating the relevant paragraph.

Options are scrolled up below the graphic display and the choice is made by a key-press. Other actions are also controlled by single keys and an overlay is provided for the purpose - this could have been made more solidly.

The graphics are animated and you are shown walking or riding through the locations. If you encounter an enemy there is a very clever combat sequence which allows you to thrust, swipe, chop and parry with whatever weapons you currently hold. This is in real time and can be a nail biting experience as your survival will depend on the fighting skill you have built up in the course of your travels.

Addicts of the book version will find the program every bit as demanding and exciting. The general quality of the graphics enhances that pleasure.

MACHINE: Spectrum
PRICE: £6.95

The first is the Lone Wolf series for the Spectrum, though I imagine that there will soon be similar offerings for other machines. There are two games in the series so far - Escape from the Dark and Fire on the Water. Both titles offer excellent animated graphics and a very unusual format.

The cassettes come either on then own or with an accompanying book that gives some idea of what to expect from the games themselves. The books are split up into numbered sections each of which contains a stage in the development of the plots. I say plots rather than plot, because the story changes as you read.

This because whenever you come to a crucial point in the story, you have to make a decision. Depending on the decision you make you are then directed to another numbered section where you continue reading.

This, of course, is very much like playing an adventure game on a computer, so it's only natural that Arrow, the publishers, have decided to offer a game as well.

The format is as follows - there's a graphics screen surrounded by an attractive border and a scrolling text window below. You place a keyboard overlay on top of your Spectrum. The storyline scrolls on the screen, and whenever you have to make a decision you press the appropriate key and the program jumps to the next stage in the story.

There are also extensive fight routines, requiring diligent pressing of Parry, Thrust, Chop, and Swipe keys. Your fighting skill and energy are monitored on the screen, and when you run out of energy Lone Wolf (that's you) bites the dust.

The fight sequences are well-animated, and after a couple of hours playing I decided that there really was a tactical element which made them much more satisfying than the usual 'You-stab-the-Dire-Wolf routines that other games tend to offer.

Escape from the Dark and Fire on the Water are consecutive games, and a character developed in the first can be loaded into the second ready for action.

So what's different about these games? The first thing to notice is that the program itself dictates your movements. For instance, you can't type in 'Go West' unless that is presented to you as an option to be selected. In this respect the game is more limited than a traditional adventure.

However, all the space saved by the absence of complex 'parsing' routines (the bits of the program in a normal adventure that scan your inputs and generate appropriate responses) means more room for graphics and animation. There is still a good deal of scope for the player to shape the game - you can sometimes run away rather than fight. You can choose your own routes to your destination, and investigate a number of dead-ends, some of which are more rewarding than others.

The White Wizard gives these games the thumbs-up and looks forward to more along the same lines. They are very different in feel to the traditional text/graphics games. but I think they have at value all of their own.

It is, incidentally, worth getting the books as well as the games - you can then use them as crib-sheets if you find the going too tough!

FIRE ON THE KEYBOARD

Noel Williams tackles Hutchinson's new computer games, Flight From the Dark and Fire on the Water, based on the Lone Wolf game book series.

It's getting harder to make the distinction between computer gamer, wargamer, roleplayer, adventurer and reader of fantasy novels. Joe Dever and Gary Chalk have produced something to make the distinction even less clear - the Lone Wolf programmed adventure books, which have now been turned into computer adventures.

It's easy to see why the computer games have been written. A programmed scenario in book form is only a couple of removes from a computer adventure, as the description 'programmed' tells us. Any competent programmer can turn such a book into a simple game with ease. In fact this is probably the easiest way to write an adventure.

Using a computer to play such a paragraph game has various advantages over the book version. No pages to turn, no risk of losing your place or forgetting the next paragraph number, no need to throw dice or to keep records on scraps of paper. But if you are looking for an interesting computer game you want more than this, especially if the game is based on a book with the same structure and which is a third of the price. Most people would have a shopping list of additions which would include things like 'attractive graphics', 'animation', 'real time action', 'significant differences from the book in plot', 'use of sound'.

Five Ways Software, the company which programmed the games, clearly know this and has gone some way towards ticking off all the items on your shopping list. You get real time combat, illustrations of each setting, moving characters and use of sound. However there does not seem to be much in the way of variation from the original books - in fact you can proceed through the programs in many situations by using the book as a reference guide. What variations there are are generally by way of reducing descriptions and missing events out. Occasionally this becomes a real problem. For example in the first four 'paragraphs' of Fire on the Water so much has been taken out of the original that you are given no choices at all and have to play through three combats. Unless you start with a well trained character you stand little chance of surviving this onslaught.

Real time combat on the Spectrum replaces the combat system of the books. The conflict in the computer versions is the most detailed and novel aspect of the program. You have choice of weapons and choice of tactics, including the psychic modes and mind blast and mind shield, and have to move your character to the most advantageous position on screen for striking a particular kind of blow. Movement is only in one plane (left to right) and you cannot change weapons halfway through a fight, but simply remembering which keys govern which tactic makes the contest quite hard. Different weapons add different values to combats and the most effective tactic also depends on the chosen weapon (it's quite hard to stab someone with a mace!). However the Spectrum's keyboard means that timing of blows is haphazard - you never know if a particular keystroke has led to a particular blow and I found that sometimes my blows were 'queued' so that the figure went on striking even when my fingers were not on the keyboard.

Nor is the feedback of effects during combat all that it might be. You do not get the usual constantly updated stats on performance. Instead your own endurance and combat skill are represented by two green thermometer like columns. When the liquid in endurance has run out, you are dead. As for the monsters, they sometimes indicate weakness by adopting slightly crumpled postures, but in other cases you have no real idea if you are doing the right thing or not.

The combination of these devices means that combat feels more haphazard than it probably is. In practice you tend to bash away at the keys in no particular order (because you have no indication of which does best) until your endurance gets low, when you attempt to retreat (and, if you are like me, you hit the wrong key only to find that you have killed the monster by mistake). It seems a little silly to design a complete system which the player is totally ignorant of.

Another novelty is that, instead of being given a character to start with who has pre-generated skills, you must undergo a training session to establish your basic skill. This takes the form of a fight with one of the elders. Apart from the report at the end of the fight you do not get a good indication of how well you are doing and the whole business is a little mystifying the first time round, but it is quite a good idea and works well once you know what is supposed to be happening.

The graphics themselves are somewhere between The Hobbit and Valhalla. They certainly offer no major advances on previous games. The backgrounds are rather better than those in The Hobbit with a better use of colour and some shading. Some are more imaginative but others less well drawn than Valhalla. The moving figures are less convincing than Valhalla's despite being better drawn and on a larger scale. The silliest thing is the way that your own character hops around the place on a single leg. The other leg is supposedly hidden by a cloak but the visual effect resembles an amputated Kermit imitating Little Red Riding Hood. On the other hand some of the monsters are quite well done, and the combat sequences produce some credible combinations of hacking and slashing. However our copy was a pre-production model and we are told some of the weaker graphics may change by the final version.

48K Spectrum
£8.95
Five Ways Software

Based on the popular Lone Wolf role-playing books comes a new series of adventure programs. The first two are Flight From The Dark and Fire On The Water. They are superb.

The games are a mixture of beautifully presented text and graphics, the latter being cleverly animated. Each adventure starts in the same way: you train as a Kai Lord to develop fighting prowess and endurance before setting out on your quest. As you progress through the adventure, you are able to call upon, learn about and develop many other Kai Disciplines. These special abilities include sixth sense, healing, tracking, weapon skill, animal kinship, telekinesis, mindshield and mindblast.

In Flight From The Dark, your mission is to wreak vengeance on the Darklords for the massacre of the Kai Warriors. You are the last of the Kai - you are now the Lone Wolf.

During your journey, you will be able to use any weapon you find or may choose to fight with your bare hands. Once in combat, a number of movements are at your disposal. You can step forwards or backwards, chop, swipe, thrust, parry and use your mindshield and mindblast powers. If all else fails, you can always run away!

The screen display, magnificently framed and looking like a parchment, is divided into two, the top half showing an imaginative and colourful scene, the bottom half being used as a scrolling text area.

Commands are given by selecting an option from one of several given at each stage. Lone Wolf, whom you guide through the adventure, is an impressively animated cloaked figure. When he leaves one scene and enters another, you may select from the options as soon as he stops walking. Once in combat, you are fully in control. To help you learn the single-key commands, a keyboard overlay is provided.

The game comes complete with the paperback, although the latter is not essential for playing the game. However, the book does contain greater detail. To assist you, the program provides the scene reference number so you can look it up in the book if you wish. A great idea and extremely well implemented, the scene number appearing in the head of a bull to one side of the screen.

A great deal of thought and professionalism has gone into the making of these games. For example, as well as being able to save the game at anyone of many stages - a cassette symbol always appears as a reminder - you can also save and transfer your Lone Wolf character from one game to another in the series.

While the books are very entertaining in their own right, the programs are even better. Everything about these games reeks of quality, from the presentation of the text to the excellent graphics, from the clarity of the instructions and cassette inlay right down to the provision of an overlay. Super stuff - can't wait for the next ones!