Producer: Reaktor
Retail Price: £8.99
Author: Byte Engineers

Doc Terror is after a stock of Tyron-Dichromate, a substance that can do more damage to the earth and its ozone layer than even the heaviest user of underarm deodorant.

Max, Jake and Ray are three mere mortals but on donning their Exohame suits they become incredible fighting warriors - Centurions, fusions of man and machine. And only they can stop the evil Doctor's dastardly deeds.

They begin life as powerless droids, but by manoeuvring itself onto a transformation pad a humble droid is changed into a Centurion.

As our heroes make their way through the landscape surrounding the Weapons Development Centre where the Tyron-Dichromate is held, hordes of malignant creatures come after them, howling for their hydraulic fluids. With their basic blasters, the Centurions can destroy these alien thugs, adding weapon upgrades when they've destroyed enough attackers to reveal collectible rectangular Quants.

Contact with an ordinary enemy reduces a Centurion's energy, but if Doc Terror himself is encountered and his image falls upon a Centurion, that warrior is returned to droid form. Back to the old transformation pad...

On each level there are six keys, all surrounded by air, sea or land, and only the Centurion with the capability to cross the encircling terrain can reach the key. When all keys have been collected then the next level can be reached.

With these keys the three different rooms of the Weapons Development Centre can finally be entered, and there the Centurions can dispose of the cases of dangerous chemical... by walking into them.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Kempston
Graphics: shoddy use of colour over uninspiring characters
Sound: good original spot FX but poor tune
Options: definable keys

If you want a game in which you can hardly see your character, with trashy sound effects and boring gameplay, then rush out and buy Centurions today. The backgrounds cover up the main sprite terribly (a bit like Wiz...), so you have to strain your eyes just to see what's going on. Reaktor games still have that irritating loading sequence and no loading screen, so the presentation isn't fantastic. Centurions is a no-go area.
NICK [30%]

If the TV show is anything like the game then I'm jolly glad I've never seen it. Centurions just doesn't work on the Spectrum; all the things that could go wrong have. The graphics use the weirdest masking technique I've seen in a long time, which makes the characters very hard to distinguish from the grassy background. Colour couldn't have been used in a more haphazard way - there's clash everywhere. And it's obvious from the outset rem this is a straight translation from another machine, not at all customised to the Spectrum's capabilities. I just hope you buyers are more responsible about it than the programmers.
PAUL [22%]

Reaktor
£8.99

Oh cripes! Doc Terror has nabbed a load of Tyron-dichromate and is about to destroy life as we know it, and probably Phil Snout, too! There's only one thing to do... call in the Centurions. This is where you come in, so snap your weapon systems onto your Exoframe, put on your cool shades and it's Powerxtreme!

Yes, I know the Centurions don't wear shades but you'll have to if you want to survive long, 'cos with this game it's Eye-strainxtreme. Not only is the colour scheme as garish as you can possibly imagine, but the sprites are miniscule, dotty blobs which flicker as they move around and flicker even more when the screen scrolls, but then the whole screen flickers while scrolling!

Centurions is hardly hot on the originality front either; it is a sort of Gauntlet meets Nemesis. You can collect extra weapons by killing certain aliens and use different keys to open different doors. Some areas of the maze can only be accessed by certain Centurions but you can change the bloke you're playing at the start.

So, the game boils down to a lot of repetitive to-ing and fro-ing as you run back to base to change your man, then back to the maze to open a door, and then back to base...

The two player option does little to incite more excitement, or improve the addictive qualities. I notice that the programmer is called A. N. Other; it's no wonder he's decided to stay anonymous!

Label: Reaktor
Author: Tony Crowther, Ross Goodley
Price: £8.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

If the idea of jigging around in a thoroughly preposterous exoskeleton, being called Jake and chasing after someone by the name of Doc Terror while still managing to look like a match-stick man refugee from an L. S. Lowry painting appeals to you, then I dare say Centurions will too.

Otherwise you'll find it odd that such a big toy game licence has been turned into such a mega-poor game - as you will see.

At first sight Centurions is a bit Guantlety, only not as neat looking. Graphically the game consists of a plan view of three different sections, outdoor and interior. The characters you control are represented by a single stick man. The only visual difference between the characters is colour.

As for shooting! A large attribute problem kind of judders across the screen!!

The only thing that could possibly redeem Centurions would be a addictive core of a game underneath the frightful exterior. So it's a bit of a blow to discover that the game itself is only moderately more interesting than a wallpaper catalogue.

The gameplay is also a bit like Gauntlet derivative. You wander around the play area, fending off goons and collecting keys to the next level.

The screen scrolls in four directions, and you can race around with reasonable speed, though you seem to spend a large amount of time racing through highly uninteresting wastelands and corridors. You can change into any Centurion you like by returning to a kind of groundbase and passing over the appropriate icon. Quite what good this does is a little unclear Try as I might. I couldn't get any character to do anything obviously impossible for the other two. Still, I'm sure this was owing to my own deficiency.

The only things I could find interesting are that there's a two-player option which could be a plus and there are more exciting weapon systems you can employ once you've bumped off a sufficient number of bad guys.

Unfortunately, there is simply no disguising the fact that Centurions has lamentably poor gameplay, is graphically awful and isn't very well programmed at all.

What a waste of a potentially interesting game subject.