| ★ AMSTRAD CPC ★ GAMESLIST ★ RASTERSCAN (c) MASTERTRONIC ★ |
Amstrad Action |
Originality is one of the most precious qualities a game can have, so it's pleasing to see that Mastertronic is not only producing excellent budget games, but packing them with originality too. Among this little gem's features are digitized pictures, a strange method of control and some mind-boggling tasks. The ship Rasterscan has been badly damaged. You must tidy up the mess and stop it plunging into the nearest star. "You", incidentally, are a spherical droid whose only known program is for repairing toasters. That leaves you with an awful lot of work to do if the ship is to be repaired. A small map of the ship shows your position and some pans of the internal structure. It doesn't show the maze of pipes that runs through the interior but always does show your position. You can move your spherical self around, spinning on your axis and bouncing off walls and pipes. The sphere suffers from quite a bit of inertia but there's nothing that can harm you by being bumped into. In order to repair the ship you have to perform three main tasks: repair the generator, repair the engines, and steer the ship out of danger. This isn't easy and requires a lot of puzzling and discovery on your pan to unravel the game's mysteries. As well as the pipes the screens have fancy design backgrounds and digitized pictures of various instruments. There are "switches" which look like the heads of spanners, engine terminals, a generator and some oildrums. There is even a tapedeck flanked by two switches which can be used for saving and loading the game - bnlliant way of doing it. The switches are used in a delightful way. You just settle the sphere down into the spanner head and press Fire. They control several features within the game and learning which-controls-what is important, because using the wrong switch can end the game. The first task is to repair a leak in the generator's fuel pipe. To do that you've got to find some replacement pipe and get outside the ship. Getting outside won't be a problem; getting back in will. Once that's done you have to repair the engines, and that involves more pipe repair. What you've got to work out is how to get hold of the repair tools.
The engines are turned on and off with switches; so is the scanner which shows the ship's position. You'll have a good deal of frustration finding out which ones to use - but once learnt, never forgotten. Some switches control the locks for doors so that when you settle into them and activate you're presented with a colour-coded puzzle that has to be solved. You have to activate the eight sections of a hexagon to the same colour, complicated by the fact that the sections cycle through several colours and alter in sequences. Some locks are harder than others, depending on the alteration pattern. It's a bit like trying to solve Rubik's cube, only not as tough. There are three indicators on the display: fuel, power and danger. The one that will cause the most immediate problem is the power gauge running down. However, in the long term the danger gauge sets the effective time limit for completing tasks. The graphics are excellent, abstract and attractive. The gameplay is superb, combining the best elements of puzzling with an enjoyable control method. The weird environment and the original features like switches make game special. It's quite stunning for a budget game and is worth £2 of anyone's money to experience it. BW, AA |
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Page créée en 212 millisecondes et consultée 2454 fois L'Amstrad CPC est une machine 8 bits à base d'un Z80 à 4MHz. Le premier de la gamme fut le CPC 464 en 1984, équipé d'un lecteur de cassettes intégré il se plaçait en concurrent du Commodore C64 beaucoup plus compliqué à utiliser et plus cher. Ce fut un réel succès et sorti cette même années le CPC 664 équipé d'un lecteur de disquettes trois pouces intégré. Sa vie fut de courte durée puisqu'en 1985 il fut remplacé par le CPC 6128 qui était plus compact, plus soigné et surtout qui avait 128Ko de RAM au lieu de 64Ko. |
