| ★ AMSTRAD CPC ★ GAMESLIST ★ THE EIDOLON (c) ACTIVISION/LUCASFILM ★ |
Amstrad Action |
It's been a long wait for this game - you may remember a preview way back in the April issue. I'm perplexed why it took so long to finish. Waiting for the Christmas market perhaps? Despite the wait it's an excellent game that should prove popular because of the delightful graphics and originality it offers.
You look out from the front of the Eidolon: a view of the caves and your instrument panel. Arched tunnels in each cave system form mazes of ever-growing complication as you progress through the levels. You can move the Eidolon forward, turn it and reverse. The only problem will be catching the cave wall when trying to round corners. The caves are created using fractals: as you approach a feature you see it in more detail, and the detail is related to the overall shape of the feature. Thus you have lines on the cave walls that continuously change their appearance as you move towards them. This creates a good movement effect. Each monster guards a jewel of different colour. They are killed by shooting fireballs at them, but you'll have to use the right one of your four types. Red fireballs are simple and destructive. Gold ones replenish your energy when picked up. Blue ones give you more time to complete the level when collected and freeze a monster for a time when fired. Green ones transform a monster into another type, but you don't know whether it will be more or less dangerous. Fireballs can be found just floating around for you to collect, but you'd better watch out for the red ones or they'll do you some damage. The monsters have different strengths. The weakest, a rotofly. can be destroyed with one shot. Their behaviour patterns are different as well. Puffer birds can spit fireballs back at you. There are also winged Biter birds, one-eyed Bottlenecks and Greps. But by far the most awesome are the dragons; when you encounter a dragon you will always have a tough fight. Each level loads separately from cassette but it doesn't take long. The graphics are excellent, the fractals giving a good impression of movement and the monsters and fireballs providing the colour and action. The monsters are very nicely animated: waving necks, flapping wings, chomping jaws and all sorts of other mannerisms. The ever-growing complexity of the caves and the increasingly menacing monsters will keep the challenge going through the levels in what is a very impressive piece of programming. BW, AMSTRAD ACTION n°16 |
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Page créée en 323 millisecondes et consultée 3342 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. |
