| ★ AMSTRAD CPC ★ GAMESLIST ★ TOTAL ECLIPSE 1 (c) INCENTIVE SOFTWARE/DOMARK ★ |
| AMSTAR&CPC | Amstrad Action | ACE | GEN4 |
Anyone who hasn't heard of the Freese ape programming system must have been living on the moons of Evath for the last 18 months. In the hands of the creative team at Incentive it turns out solid 3D environments in which all manner of adventures have been taking place. Take a wander back in time to 1930, to a world in peril. Mankind is threatened by an ancient curse - if. at any time of the day, the sun is prevented from shining on an Egyptian shrine at the top of a pyramid, whatever prevents the light from reaching the shrine will go boom. Unfortunately there's about to be an eclipse, and that means it's the moon that is going to go boom, causing an awful lot of life-terminating problems for the people on Earth. Being a right little Indiana Jones, you've flown in by biplane to the pyramid and are going to have a crack at getting to the shrine and removing the curse. All before the eclipse happens and the tea gets cold in the pot. As well as the Freescape view of the surroundings, the main display contains a number of informative icons. The top of the screen shows the number of Ankhs being earned (these ancient artifacts act as keys) and the value of treasure collected, and contains a picture that shows how near the eclipse is. At the bottom of the screen a message window gives details of the location and reports on events as they happen, and below that is a watch that shows exactly how much time remains before disaster strikes, a waterbottle, a heartbeat meter, and a compass. There are a number of ways of goofing things up on the quest - such as running out of time, agitating your heart so that you have a heart attack, or encountering an instantly terminal trap. The heartbeat is speeded up by falling off things, running out of water or getting attacked by the automatic defence systems. The overall mission objective is to get to the shrine at the top of the pyramid, but in order to provide an ongoing measure of progress (and make the adventure worthwhile) treasure can be picked up along the way. The puzzles are similar in nature to those in Driller, but everything is much more compact. it's not a matter of exploring large open areas, but one of mapping a complicated maze of rooms packed with objects. Much of the uneventful travel between places that you have in Driller and Dark Side is eliminated, concentrating both the mind and gameplay. Your interface' with objects is again conducted in two main ways: shoot them or walk up to them. There's the same freedom of movement to look up and down, crouch or do IT turns and there is also a handy option to reorientate yourself to face forward - it saves a lot of time spent messing about after having a good look round a room. The early rooms are full of relatively easy puzzles to solve, getting you comfortably into the action. it's not just a matter of finding one correct solution either... there are a number of ways of solving most situations, giving a welcome flexibility to the gameplay. It's hard to go wrong with the Freescape system, which is ideally suited for producing absorbing games. Total Eclipse is nearer to a standard arcade adventure than the previous games in terms of exploration and puzzle solving, and Freescape gives it the winning edge. Bob Wade, ACE |
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Page créée en 022 millisecondes et consultée 5280 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. |
