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Welcome
to Game of the Week! Each week there will be a
new featured game on this page. The game may be good,
average or diabolically bad, it really doesn't matter!
Just look at the pics, read the text and enjoy the nostalgia!
:-) Game of the Week! is open to contributions so if you
would like to contribute
a game article for this page you're more than welcome
to! Every article we receive will be considered! |
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Saucer
Attack
1985 Ariolasoft
Programmed
by Jim D. Sachs
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Most
text of the present article comes from the review published
in the seventh issue of the British C64 magazine ZZAP!64
(November 1985). |
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SAUCER
ATTACK
Ariolasoft,
£7.95 cass, £9.95
disk, joystick only
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For some mysterious and unexplained reason aliens in
flying saucers have decided to invade Earth -- they've
probably been watching the new series of V. Deciding
that Washington DC is the best place to achieve their
aim, they fly around destroying famous landmarks in
a fit of extraterrestrial vandalism. Based in a bunker
on the outskirts of this famous city, it's your job
to send the aliens back from whence they came. Your
armament is an energy gun, with the limitation of only
being able to have one shot in the air at any time.
Saucer
Attack from Ariolasoft is straightforward alien
zap. You control your energy gun via the joystick. By
moving the cross hair sight around the screen, you can
let loose an energy ball as soon as your sights are
lined up. The screen depicts the view of a bunker looking
out across Washington with all the familiar landmarks
visible. The object of the game is to repel the invaders
and you can achieve this by scoring 150 points. Once
you've done that, you get a crack it the mothership.
The invaders need to reach only 50 points to win the
game. For every three seconds they gain a point and
also when they manage to destroy any of the major landmarks,
such as Washington's Needle, they receive an extra 6
points.
Different
tactics are needed depending on the saucers' movement
patterns. If a ship is moving horizontally, only when
you fire will it remain stationary. If the aliens are
moving vertically at all they keep moving regardless.
For hitting a moving saucer you gain bonus points. Every
now and again one of the space ships attempts a landing
and if it succeeds then it's goodnight Washington. When
this happens a message flashes in the status area at
the bottom of the screen.
There
are three phases of attack, each one starting every
time you score 50 points. The waves take place in daytime,
evening and night with the graphics changing accordingly.
Having thwarted the invaders, it's off into space to
confront the mother ship. Flying through a starfield,
the mother ship flies back and forth in front of you.
The place you need to hit is the command module at the
top. If you miss it, yet hit some other part of the
ship, then it loses some shielding. The amount of ammo
you've got left on this stage depends on how well you
did in the previous stage. Kill the mothership and the
game's finished.
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Saucer Attack
looks brilliant. The graphics are amazing and the animation
superb. The only trouble is that there isn't very much
of a game there. Even JR managed to complete it after
three half-hearted attempts. I must admit that
there are some difficult factors
involved. The program sometimes gets a mite confused
as to whether you've blown up a saucer or not. More
then once I launched an energy globe that smacked right
in the middle of one of the alien invaders, only to
have the program totally ignore my destructive talents
(Oh yeah, any excuse - JR). Also the inability
to have more than one missile in air at once made the
going slow. The scoring system is a bit awkward -- the
instructions say that the saucers gain a point every
three seconds which is fair enough, but the points are
only added into the saucers' score once you've fired
a shot. The atmosphere is really strange, it feels like
you're acting out a naff fifties sci-fi movie. Overall
pretty bad, I'm afraid despite the wonderful graphics
there's just too little gameplay for Saucer
Attack to make it, except
as a reasonably priced budget game.
.
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Presentation 51%
Title
screen and his-score feature but no options.
Graphics 78%
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On
viewing Saucer
Attack
for the first time I thought I was in for something
special, since the background looks so stunning.
Unfortunately this turns out to be misleading
as the game is weaker than the unusual but sparse
sound effects, with little to do other than blast
two spaceships. This becomes incredibly boring
after only a few games and quite honestly, I feel
there's little more to say on the matter.
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Incredible backdrop, neat sprites, not much else.
Sound
30%
Strange, fitting but few FX.
Hookability
61%
Enough interest for a couple of
games. . .
Lastability
29%
. . . but that's all.
Value
For Money 28%
Little gameplay offered for the
price.
Overall
30%
Great graphics just aren't enough.
.
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Htmlized by Dimitris
Kiminas (24 Aug 2003)
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