Reviews

Cannon Bubble is in a similar category such as games like Tetris - the general idea is to match patterns to remove items from play, to stop the screen from filling up. In this game, you are supplied with a cannon at the bottom of the screen, and you fire coloured cannon balls. Hit a ball of the same colour to eliminate it (and any it might be supporting). If you miss... that ball sticks where it lands, filling up the screen some more.

The first set of levels are quite easy, and it gets you into the game. However, as you progress, you have to think quicker, and plan quickly where to send your cannon ball to clear out the most of the level possible in a shot...and to be a real expert, think ahead a few moves and make sure you don't make the game harder for yourself.

The game has great AY music, and very good replayability. Since the first few screens are not made too hard, it gives new players a chance to figure the game out without getting frustrated. The action is fast, and the game is very well presented.

Confuzion is not a widely known or accoladed game, and indeed, Your Spectrum gave it a "miss" on Joystick Jury when it came out - the reviewers essentially complained that it was too hard.

In this game, you have a game play grid made up of sections of fuse. There is a blank square, and you move the fuse tiles into the blank square, just like the plastic number shuffle puzzle games. A spark travels along the fuse, and you need to shuffle the right sections of fuse around so that the fuse hits a bomb. You have limited time in which to clear all the bombs...and if your fuse hits the edge of the screen where there is no bomb, you lose time. On later screens, there are also drops of water that run along the fuse grid - and as you might expect, allow the spark to run into the water drop and the spark goes out. As the game progresses, you have to track more and more things in your mind...as once there's a couple of water drops for company, you really have to start thinking ahead.

It is a very challenging game once you've cleared the first few screens, and you do have to think quickly. However, the challenge gives it excellent replayability, and if you enjoy this kind of game it's one you'll want to return to. Graphically, it's very well presented, and the controls are responsive, so you can concentrate on the game.

One of the more curious things about the game is that on the B side of the cassette, there was a song for the game, not surprisingly called "Confuzion" by a band called Private Property. It's difficult to find any information on the band today, other than the band members. The song itself was competently produced, but fairly typical 1980s style pop.

Skool Daze is simply a legend in its own lunchtime.

Naturally, a legend in a school lunchtime.

In this game, you play the hero, Eric. A misunderstood youth by his teachers (So disruptive, says one. Basically, he is very lazy, says another), and he's going to be in a whole load of hot water when the school report arrives.

So the only solution is to get the combination to the safe, and steal the report.

As Eric, you have to break all the shields in the school to get the secret combination to the safe from the teachers. This wouldn't be so hard if it wasn't for the small detail of being compelled to attend lessons, and of course, not get caught doing your deeds by the teachers - or being grassed up by the school swot.

The teachers are the usual bunch of varied people you find in any school - a brutal headmaster, who walks around menacingly with his cane, the gentle and eccentric science teacher, the geography teacher who wants to appear cool to the kids but never quite pulls it off, and the history teacher that's older than most of the history he teaches. Then there's your mates - the school bully, the kid who thinks he's too cool, the swot, and of course all the anonymous little kids you want nothing to do with - well, except to occasionally knock down to use as a jumping stool to get a particularly inaccessible shield.

The game is very well presented, and extremely engaging. A nice touch is being able to change the names of all the main characters - and who doesn't change the teachers names to match your own school teachers? It is just as unfair as a real school - you get into trouble for things you didn't do, and because of school overcrowding, you sometimes get shoved out of your chair and even though it wasn't your fault, you STILL get the punishment. And at the end, there's always the desperate attempt to halt the inevitable, and with the day of reckoning nigh as you have more than 10,000 lines, and Mr. Whacker, the headmaster, is marching purposefully towards you to expel you...and you just need one more shield to win... oh, the frustration!

Skool Daze is simply one of the classic games of its day. It is very simply, excellent in every respect.

Trashman was a fairly unique title at its release - who would have thought of making a game about a dustman's job? Malcom Evans did, and he made a very playable and engaging game out of it.

The task is straightforward - in a limited time, walk the neighbourhood, gather the bins, and empty into the dustcart. But this being the 80s, there are some complications... no traffic calming schemes, so it's all too easy to get run over when crossing the road by a speeding car - and it's all over when you get run down. There's the perennial problem of cyclists riding on the pavement, and being hit by one of those will make your hero limp and move more slowly. Trashman seems to share the same problem as the postman - being chased by dogs who bite (and make him limp).

But there are friendly neighbours, who invite you in for a cup of tea, and this extends your time.

Graphically, the game is clean and well presented, showing a rendition of a typical British suburban main road - complete with lawns that must not be stepped on (on pain of losing time and possibly getting bitten by the family dog) and bins stuck in the most inconvenient place the homeowner could think of. Many of the messages that you get when a home owner invites you in are amusing. The game gives the impression of being well written - the game is responsive to your inputs.

The only annoyance I personally have with this game is that it completely unnecessarily uses a "cursor through each character to enter your name" system when you start a new game, when the Spectrum has a perfectly usable keyboard where you could enter your name ten times more quickly.

Thieves School (or Escuela de Ladrones, en español) is the latest 2008 game released by World XXI Soft in Argentina. It's a game for the 128K Spectrum, and consists of two sides to the tape - side A which runs a demo style background story (and which is optional), and side B, which is the game itself.

In the game, you play the part of one of two thieves - either Courage, in the Action/Robbery game style, or Mist, in the Stealth/Larceny game style. In the Action/Robbery style game, you must steal all the goods and valuables in each level, and eliminate all the witnesses with harmful objects you may encounter - you don't get any weapons to start with - you must collect them yourself. You must also re-collect your weapons once you have used them. You throw the weapons at your enemies - and the weapons bounce until they run out of energy, so if you plan your attack right you can hit several of your enemies in a single attack. When an enemy succumbs, they will drop a useful item.

In the Stealth/Larceny game, you must liberate the goods and valuables in each level - preferably without detection. You get no weapons. This style of game also includes safes, and you must pick the locks of the safes you encounter to liberate the contents.

The game also includes two player modes (two players at one keyboard), where you can play cooperatively or in "deathmatch" mode.

The level design of the game is excellent. You are eased into the game - the first ten or so levels are not too difficult, which gives you a chance to learn how to use the weapons in the Action/Robbery style without the frustration of getting killed all the time, and how to evade detection in Stealth/Larceny. The way the weapons work in Action/Robbery gives the game an extra dimension that most platform games don't have. The two game styles also gives the game a broader appeal - those who like action can have action, and those who prefer non-violent means have their day, too. The game also has custom options, such as "against the clock" style game play.

Finally, the sound track, by Factor6, is simply excellent. The menu screen theme is a superb AY cover of the exit theme tune of the Bourne series of films (Extreme Ways, by Moby) which transfers to the AY chip exquisitely. The in-game music, a different theme for each set of screens, is similarly well written. While a good sound track won't make a game with poor playability good, a good soundtrack makes a good game even better - and Factor6's soundtrack is just the icing on the cake for a fantastic game.

In summary, Thieves School is quickly becoming one of my favorite Spectrum games. Hats off to the developers.

Elite is one of those games that has the privileged spot of being the starter of a genre. And with good reason, too. It really did feel like a universe squeezed into an 8 bit computer, and it fired the imagination. Extras that came in the box, such as "The Dark Wheel" novella, added to the Elite experience.

Unfortunately, the Spectrum version had some technical shortcomings compared to the original BBC Micro version - the controls felt sluggish, and the game didn't seem anywhere near as smooth as the BBC Micro version, which as others have observed, have caused the game to age badly - especially in comparison to the BBC version which personally I find much more playable. Other irritations that detract from the Spectrum version are the appallingly bad Lenslok protection scheme - like all protection schemes quickly hacked out by pirates, meaning pirated versions were better than the rather expensive legally bought game. In my case, the Lenslok barely worked with our ancient TV, and nearly left me with a useless game.

These flaws were not fatal to the game, and it was still good in its day. The Spectrum version did fire the imagination, and I played the game all the way to "Deadly" when it was new on the Spectrum. However, now I have the choice, I would rather play the BBC Micro disc version.

In the 1980s, there was significant paranoia about the final war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact - TV films such as the rather wishy-washy "The Day After", and the simply terrifying "Threads" were fresh in many people's minds, and in our parents generation, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table at the UN were all too recent.

This gave the game an all-too-real and chilling aspect, especially when you read the part about the Reflex system in the game´s instructions, and how it was modelled on a proposed NATO automatic response system.

The game is well-written - attention has been paid to the control system so it doesn't get in your way - if mice were popular when the game came out, it would have naturally fitted mouse control. As is the case in strategy (both games and real life) you need to allocate resources, plan your attack and defence, and think ahead about what the enemy might do. Theatre Europe also gives you a couple of more chilling options - the use of chemical or tactical nuclear attacks. Strangely, chemical attacks are limited to civilian targets, whereas tactical nuclear strikes can also be targeted on enemy military units. It also gives the option to use the "reflex" system to automatically retaliate when attacked with chemical or nuclear weapons. Finally, it also gives the option of using the "fire plan". These innocuous words mean an all out nuclear attack against your enemy. It's also the "instant lose" option, because the enemy will retaliate with their fire plan. Humanity doesn't get to survive the resulting six gigaton exchange.

The game also contains an "arcade mode" where you get to play out all the battles, but in contrast to the main strategy game, it seems an afterthought and is fairly poor. It's best to turn off the arcade mode once you've played it once, just to see what it's like.

The game is especially hard to play as NATO - you inevitably find yourself forced to attack enemy units with nuclear weapons, with the risk of the Warsaw Pact responding with a massive retaliation.

The computer plays a good game, despite being only a 48K Spectrum, and it's a tribute to the developers that they made the AI convincing with such limited resources. There are a few shortcomings, though - the Warsaw Pact side all too often, towards the end of the war when they are winning by a country mile, launches an all out nuclear strike, which means they get destroyed too by your reflex system. The computer also seems to also be a bit eager to use weapons of mass destruction when there's no real need for it to do so. In my opinion, the authors should have ditched the "arcade" mini-game altogether, and used those resources to make a more complex AI.

Southern Belle is a train driving simulation, from the era of mainline steam on the Southern Region - the 1930s. The railway line in the game is from London Victoria to Brighton, and users of this route today will recognise many of the station names, including some which show the passage of time - it was once Gatwick Racecourse, not Gatwick Airport.

The simulation itself allows you to control all the primary controls of the steam locomotive, the regulator, the cut-off and brake, as well as the fireman's task - stoking the fire, the fire doors. The simulation allows you to control the injectors and blowers. Different skill levels allow you to control more or less of these - allowing the new player to get to grips with the train with just the regulator, cut-off and brake, with the computer looking after the rest, before getting into the complexities of managing the rest of the firebreathing dragon of machinery. It then grades you on your performance - timekeeping (you don't want to be early or late), safety - did you stick to speed limits? Did you let the train roll back on a hill start? While to the casual observer, the line from London to Brighton looks flat, to a heavy train there are plenty of gradients, and the driver must anticipate them so the train doesn't lose time going uphill, and doesn't break the speed limit going downhill. Additionally, you have to make the run without running out of fuel or without running out of water. Driving the engine inefficiently will result in one or the other running out.

Like many simulations, the graphics have not aged well, although due to the detail of the rest of the simulation this can be overlooked - much of the game's playability was always in running the train efficiently and to time, rather than the eye candy. Simulations from the 8 bit era generally suffer from this, since in a simulation, good graphics often really does add to the "suspension of disbelief" that's not required in other game types (such as a platform game). However, there are few modern simulations that deal with driving a steam train with the technical attention to detail of Southern Belle, graphics notwithstanding.

Fighter Pilot was one of the earlier flight simulation games to appear on the Spectrum, and it was ahead of its time. Depicting the USAF's F15 "Eagle", it presents the player with several options: most of which allow the player to get to grips with the aircraft - such as Landing Practise. The game also has the option to fly in weather conditions from nil wind and perfect visibility, to conditions of turbulence and wind, as well as "flying blind" in the fog with only instruments for reference above 50 feet.

The combat game itself consists of protecting your airfields from enemy fighter/bomber aircraft. Typically, you locate the enemy using your flight computer, intercept, and then dogfight. Four difficulty levels are available, which change the characteristics of the enemy (but don't change the behaviour of your aircraft). A higher level enemy will detect your approach sooner, and will make more manuevres during dogfights. If you take sufficient damage, it's game over; you can repair damage, take on fuel, and re-stock ammunition by landing at one of the air bases.

Some interesting points about the simulation is that it simulates angle of attack - something rare in most flight simulation games until 32 bit computers were commonplace. This is most noticable when you slow the aircraft - at low speeds, to maintain level flight you must fly at a significantly nose-high attitude. It also has six degrees of freedom, one of the things that a flying game must achieve to be properly called a simulation. The six degrees of freedom and angle of attack are simulated well enough that it is actually possible to attempt "knife edge flight" - rolling the aircraft 90 degrees to the horizon, and using the rudder to keep the nose up so that the tail and fuselage sides generate enough lift for flight. It was the attention to detail that made Fighter Pilot much more than just a dogfighting game, but something that could be explored in its own right.

Oh dear, where to start with Flight Path 737...

Probably at the cassette box. A Boeing 737 is a twin engine jet, with a conventional tail, however, the cassette box shows a picture of something with a T-tail, somewhat reminiscent of a DC-9. This may seem picky, but getting entirely the wrong aircraft on the box is just the first of a series of fundamental problems with this game.

Secondly, the game is entirely written in BASIC, except a routine to play two channel sound through the beeper - which is the only redeeming feature of the entire game. This means the game controls react ponderously. The game instructions aren't very good either, the first problem is that they don't tell you to line up *exactly* to the degree with the runway, or you will crash at exactly 100 knots on the takeoff roll. Any real pilot will tell you they look out the window and steer, they don't line up the compass exactly!

If you do manage to get airborne, then you discover the picture of the mountains is not animated, rather, static.

It's doubtful whether a worse flight simulator was written for the Sinclair Spectrum. It only makes it worse that the program was a full-price game back in the day.

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.

Rommel's Revenge is a conversion to the Spectrum of the "Battle Zone" style arcade game. It's one of the earliest vector graphics games that appeared on the Spectrum, being released in 1983, some time before games like "Elite".

It was also notable for its curious loader, that painted the loading screen not in the typical "load a SCREEN$ at the start" style of nearly all Spectrum games, but progressively as the game loaded - as well as the lack of the familiar border loading stripes.

The aim of the game is to drive your tank around the 3D vector graphics landscape, eliminating enemy tanks before they eliminate you.

As a game though, it's a little bit of a let-down - it doesn't have much replayability given the simple style of gameplay, and the responsiveness is a little on the slow side (although this can be forgiven, given the year of release and the detail to the landscape; it's probable that the game has to do more than Elite to paint the outside world).

Released in 1983, this game by Microsphere has the player as a motorcyclist. You must ride your powerful sports bike with precision and often much speed - avoiding various dangers - inexplicably large wildlife out to crush you or knock you off your bike, patches of ice, and bits of Evel Knevel's outfit - jumps over buses and cars. Additionally, the player must not run out of fuel. There are various places in the map where fuel is provided. Once you reach the end of the level, you must race the Ghostrider back. Rather unfairly, the Ghostrider gets to avoid all the nasties, after all - he is a ghost and can ride through walls, buses, and overgrown hedgehogs.

The game is presented as a multi level side scroller. Hills slow and speed the bike, and riding fast uses up fuel much more quickly than riding slow. Take a jump at the wrong speed, and you can crash on landing, or not make it across the obstacles. A quick burst of acceleration will make your bike wheelie, so you can get across some of the bumps in the map, that pitch you off the bike if your front tyre hits it.

The action is fast, and the controls are responsive - Wheelie was definitely one of the best 1983 releases for the Spectrum - not just graphically appealing but with great replayability. It's also a challenging game - it takes quite a bit of practise before you can get through the first level the first time - ensuring that for seasoned players, the first level isn't just a boring milk run which you must pass.

Wheelie was also notable for appearing in Skool Daze - apparently Boy Wonder enjoyed the game greatly, often writing "I LOVE WHEELIE" on the blackboards...

Ghostbusters is a mix of strategy and action/adventure. You have to make decisions on how to equip your Ghostbusters franchise (using limited money), clean up the ghosts to earn more money (and get better kit) and finally, defeat the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

There certainly was plenty of potential for a reasonable strategy/action/adventure, but as nearly every movie tie-in is - it ended up being just a fraction of what it should have been - basically, Activision trying to use the marketing tie in to sell the game without having to go to the bother of making a game that was actually good.

If you did stick around for long enough to fight the Stay Puft marshmallow man, the screen to get there was nearly impossible to pass - a sudden death after doing all the work to get there. (Some details may be hazy; the game (mercifully?) is distribution denied so I can't really verify that this was truly the case).

Additionally, the game was expensive - £10, when most full price games of far higher quality were £5.99. Well worth missing. The Commodore 64 version did have as a saving grace a decent sound track, but it still had the same terrible game at its heart.

Manic Miner is a very simple game. Move left or right, jump, collect the objects, jump over the nasties, and reach the exit for the level when all the items are collected, before running out of air.

It is, also without a doubt, one of the best games for any computer.

Why? Technically, it's rather simple - it doesn't push the Spectrum or any other machine to the limit. It has been said that it's also not exactly an outstanding model of Spectrum games programming, in fact, a bit of the opposite. The game play itself is rather simple. The graphics are simple. From an objective point of view, you could say Manic Miner is a bit overrated.

But Manic Miner is a game that is greater than the sum of its parts. There is something undefinable that makes me come back to this game time and time again, despite it being decades old. It's not just Matthew Smith's humourous touches to the game, nor just the varied levels. There is something Just Right about Manic Miner - something perfect about its playability - and it's very hard to define why this is so. In many games, having to make pixel-perfect jumps makes the game tedious. But in Manic Miner, it's part of the magic.

The technical shortcomings of Manic Miner don't matter either - if these were to be fixed, it wouldn't actually make for a better game. Manic Miner can be enjoyed for what it is, and often attempts at enhancement will burst the magic.

Starstrike is quite obviously an unauthorized Star Wars game. The concept is very Star Wars - you fly your ship to the Death Star, attack it, and attempt to destroy it, just as Luke did in the film.

You begin in space - on your journey to your target. While you're approaching, you are attacked by enemies which are very reminiscent of tie-fighters. After this wave is complete, you then fly low over the surface of your target, again trying to defend yourself from attack. You can get a bonus by shooting the tops off the towers. Once you've passed this, then you enter the final attack run - in the equatorial duct, dodging the catwalks, trying to shoot off the cannons and avoid incoming fire. Finally, you arrive at the reactor - you must shoot the two pods to succeed, or you have to repeat the run.

This is one of the fast moving 3D games for the Spectrum, using wire frame graphics. It has a faster pace than Elite, and very responsive controls - technically, it appears very competent. The low level flight over the Death Star is my favorite part, and probably the most challenging to get right, since your controls move the firing reticule and steer the ship, but one more than the other. It's easy to get carried away and collide with a tower (at which point you do a roll).

My only real criticism of the game is that it lacks depth. The three main phases don't last all that long, so you very quickly go through the main phases, destroy the reactor, hyperspace and attack the next Death Star. The shortness of the levels does mean it can get a bit repetitive, and I think a bit more variety in the "low flying" part could have improved the game. Having said that, in general the game does stand out from the crowd, and it does let you start at a higher difficulty level, so if you want the challenge you don't have to wade through lots of easy screens to get there. Technically, it's competent, and it's a good game to pick up if you need ten minutes relief from real life.

Knight Lore was simply - from a technical point of view - astounding when it came out. It's just a pity they forgot to ship a game with this beautiful isometric engine...

Perhaps that's being a bit unfair - there was of course a game there. Arguably, a more complex game than, say, Manic Miner - but it seemed to sorely lack the "Just Rightness" that some of the later isometric games had. The controls seemed like an afterthought, and as often noted, there were few visual cues as to exactly where you were in the isometric world which made the gameplay suffer greatly.

Despite the technical brilliance of this pioneering work, it does feel a bit like a technical demonstrator with a game tacked on as an afterthought - despite some of the unique points of the gameplay. The controls and the slowdowns and the lack of positional cues cause the playability to suffer terribly, and as such, it doesn't have the "Just Rightness" that would make it a true great.

In this game, as you may expect - you fly the Airwolf helicopter. You must rescue some scientists from a cavern system. The game being called "Airwolf" also means it's a license tie-in with a TV programme. Unfortunately, "license tie-in" is usually a synonym for "terrible, overpriced game".

And indeed, it was a bit on the pricey side, although nothing so bad as "Ghostbusters".

It's actually not such a bad game, though. Graphically, it's very well presented, and it's challenging to play. Unfortunately, it's also a bit frustrating to play - it relies far too heavily on pixel perfect positioning, instead of something that still requires a lot of skill, but not ridiculous precision. I suppose the author wanted to capture some of what it's like to hover a real helicopter, which is a bit like trying to balance a marble on the end of a pin. It's also a bit on the short side, having only a dozen screens, and some of these not all that worthwhile.

Today it is worth downloading and playing, but it doesn't have the lasting appeal that will have you repeatedly coming back to it like many other Spectrum games - once you've played it through once, you don't really feel like returning to it.

Sweevo's World is an isometric puzzle/action/adventure style game. It came out at approximately the same time a flood of isometric titles were appearing, following on from Ultimate's lead with Knight Lore.

However, unlike Knight Lore, there's actually a game in Sweevo's World, and a fun one at that (perhaps that's being slightly unfair to Knight Lore, but on reflection it seems more of a technology demonstrator with a game bolted on, rather than a game first and foremost). The mechanics of Sweevo's World are straightforward - it doesn't have so much of the pushing things around aspect of many of the isometric games, but this doesn't matter - it has good game play. Added to this game play is a good sense of humour from the developers, and quite rightly this game is a classic - a very playable isometric game that leaves you wanting more after each game.

After all, who doesn't want to drop a comedy 1 ton weight on their enemies!

Think! is a game where you, well, think. The concept is very simple - you have a 6 by 6 square playing board, and you take turns with another player or against the computer pushing in a tile from either the bottom or the right edge of the board. When a tile is pushed onto the board, everything in that row - including spaces - is pushed a square too. The first player to line up 4 tiles, horizontally, vertically or diagonally wins. If your move lines up your opponent's tiles like this, well, then they win!

There are several variants of the game - speed think, with each move against the clock. Blitz think, with a time limit per game, plus "problem solving" games - pre-set boards a bit like the chess games you see in the "serious" newspapers.

The game itself is icon driven, probably one of the earliest to be like this. It is extremely well presented - a good use of colour, fonts, and graphics makes the game clean and attractive. The game concept itself is good - there are only four rules so it's easy to learn, but there are surprising challenges and you have to think ahead. There are 7 skill levels if you play against the computer, but past level 4 or so, the computer takes quite a long time to figure out its next move. All in all, a very elegant design, and it's a pity this game didn't get more exposure "back in the day"; I only discovered it in 2009.

I suspect the game would be at its best if you find another human opponent to play against (where you can try the Speed and Blitz variants).

Exolon is an arcade shooter. For each screen, you start at the left, and need to fight your way rightwards until you get to the next screen. Your fire button can launch two types of weapon - a normal gun and a grenade (or at least, an RPG). The gun is to shoot the general nasties that are trying to finish you off, and the grenades are for destroying things that are in your way.

The nasties you come across are quite varied, from the stationary (like mines) to the captured (the small jittery balls captured in the globes you occasionally need to blow up to complete a level), to the downright nasty (the high speed missiles you can't shoot and the planes that speed right up before going for you). There are also some traps, like big rams that suddenly come up from the ground...and kill you. There are also teleporters to help you get around levels.

The game itself is technically excellent - large numbers of sprites, some of which move at high speed, spectacular grenade explosions, and lots of colour. Visually, it's one of the best arcade shooters around. However, what makes it a 4 rather than a 5 at least for me is the game play lets it down a little - the game play is good, but there are certain annoyances, such as situations where you don't seem to be able to avoid losing a life (there's a rocket launcher on one level, and if it starts firing, you're done for). The game play also seems slightly slow for the genre. However, none of these things are fatal to the game - it's still a very good game.