Reviews

After Android Two had put Costa Panayi and Vortex on the map, there was a certainly level of expectation around for his next game which was further fuelled by some rather abstract adverts.

The game itself didn't fail to impresss, however. You play the role of a tornado pilot who has to fly very accurately at low level to pass over a number of targets, before returning back to a runway to land. Succeed, and you'll get another set of targets in progressively more awkward positions for you to navigate around.

The world is presented in a similar 3D fashion to Android Two, but with much more depth and a greater variety in scenery. It scrolls in eight directions too; although at the character level, it's a good enough effect to work given the speed you're travelling at, and the great use of colour more than makes up for any lack of smoothness.

Where the game really comes into its own is that it allows you to fly freely around the map and take on the targets in any order and from whatever direction you choose; you can even choose to do your own thing and do a bit of stunt flying; there are a couple of bridges you can go under, and power lines and towers to weave in and out of. Whether you want to play the game or just muck about with it, it's great fun.

T.L.L, or Tornado Low Level, is one of those games which wasted plenty of my time on school holiday summer evenings. Graphically appealing but with simple and playable gameplay, it was a game that got things very right.

In the game, the player must carry out various missions at low level with their Panavia Tornado. Low level of course implies certain hazards - buildings and powerlines. The missions were to eliminate targets by flying very low over them - your bombadier takes care of dropping the actual bombs. Some of the targets are difficult to hit, being close to buildings or other scenery. While you're doing this, you must take care not to run out of fuel.

The controls are simple - basically, turn left, right, climb and descend - swing wings for cruise flight and extend them for landing (along with the wheels). Landing and stopping on a runway refuels the aircraft.

The map itself "wraps around" so if you fly off the right end of the map you appear again on the left end.

Really playable, fast-paced game where you have to fly your Tornado aircraft over various targets without crashing into nearby obstacles such as houses, trees or even power-lines. View is sort of top-down, but really at a 45-degree angle due to the pseudo-3D graphics. The viewing angle (and more importantly altitude) is emphasised by the shadow of the aircraft cast on the ground.

8-way scrolling has to use 8-pixel increments, due to the multi-coloured game world, so it's not exactly smooth by modern standards, but funnily enough it works quite well. Perhaps it's because the game runs at a fair pace, and it's certainly nice to see the green grass, yellow cliffs and cyan sea.

You really have to have your wits about you when you play this one. Good reaction times are essential. The blink of an eye can be catastrophic. Also you can't take too long trying to nab those targets, or the aircraft might run out of fuel.

Overall, it's the playability and spot-on difficulty level that makes this game excellent. Always fun for a quick go, and takes some practice to become an adept pilot.

It's simply beautiful to look at, it was technically formidable for 1984, and I'll add that it's the link between Costa Panayi first manifestation of its personal colorful 3d graphics - in Android 2 - and the following Cyclone, one of the absolute masterpiece of Spectrum softography, wich added to Highway Encounter makes 1985 Costa Panayi's year.

So I can see Cyclone embryio in this one, but I can't play it, I find it too hard, I can't control the jet properly. I don't find the right playabilty. Not that I've tried so very hard, anyway.

But for now it's 3/5.

More than good 3-dimensional flying-simulator . . . this game seems to have a good reputation in WOS but I don´t think it reaches perfection so I won´t give it a 5 but a 4,5 instead .


Great view and great flying feeling ! !

1984 Vortex Software (UK)
written by Costa Panayi

Wow, this was such an amazingly looking game. Technically superb, graphically beautiful and very original.
It may look simple for today's kids, but the 3D landscape was the best in those days.
Costa had already exceeded expectations with Android 2, which by the way has a few landscapes elements repeated in this game (the colorful trees, for instance), but no one was expecting such a step forward in quality. In fact, Costa outdid himself again later, with Cyclone, Highway Encounter and Deflektor.

I did find the game very hard back in the day, but nowadays it looks very easy to finish (heck, I touched the five targets in 5 minutes and landed safely right after, just before writing this review).
Oh, and yes, that is the games goal: You are a test pilot flying around searching for 5 targets using a radar and a map as help, and picking them up by flying your plane very low over them, and then return to the base. The games restarts but now with less time to finish the task.
This is the downside, after you complete the first row, the game turns into a scoring game.
Still it was great just flying around the game area, making stunts, like crossing below electricity wire poles or between buildings or even below the bridge (the hardest stunt me and friends discovered).
Thankfully, Costa returned with Cyclone, which was sort of a sequel and a superb game.

Another marvel coded by Costa Panayi in 1984.

Take off a plane, refuel, sweep back wings for faster speed and land in a cute map full of rivers, bridges, roads, high-voltage power lines, houses, trees, ... an author's personal imprint later left in his classic work Cyclone.

You must fire certain enemy targets at a very low altitude, what makes it really hard to succeed. Besides, the insane plane speed makes it hard to control, being a very difficult game that needs time to take over it.