Reviews

I first played Beast on the Amiga, sure the aesthetics carry it to a certain degree but I like it and I don't think it is quite as shallow as a lot of people claim.

Anyway, I fired it up on the plus3 the other night and found myself enjoying it just as the original, and similarly got my butt kicked in the castle. Obviously everything had to be scaled down considerably but the results are admirable, the scrolling is still smoother than a lot of ST games and the level of detail is adequate to convey the trademark atmosphere albeit accompanied by some rather funky colour schemes. Actually I think after conversion the backdrops in particular are somewhat evocative of Baal, an earlier Psygnosis game from a different team. Whittaker's score is good as expected but I still couldn't resist listening to the original mods on WinAMP while playing.

Maybe Beast doesn't have the universal appeal of Pacman but the heady mix of exploration, simple puzzles and twitch reflex action works fairly well and is carried off by the unique art direction. If you ever thought on going through Beast on all formats, why not start with the Spectrum?

This is a pretty fun Boulder Dash variant, the character is a parody of Indiana Jones so you can outrun boulders. Some of the features like using fuses and detonators to clear rocks and collecting a perfume bottle allows you to go unnoticed around the nasties for a short time which is neat. I couldn't quite beat the last layout, but it was pretty compulsive to play, worth having a look at.


-Amigian128 aka Akkroid

This is a pretty decent text adventure, not sure why it is for 128k since there is no gfx, but anyway. The good vs evil story is a little trite but the author at least tried to give some atmosphere through the text with you as the gruff outsider getting about in a clapped-out Escort searching for answers about a mass family suicide at a farm. The vocabulary is clearly outlined at the beginning of the game, the most trouble I had was retrieving items once they had been put into a bag so managing items took extra leg-work and also driving the car was more simple than I initially thought. The game has some funny moments like a puzzle relating to laxatives and also some pokes at Aussie soaps. Not bad at all really, puzzles range from easy to really a bit obscure, but I persevered and found it fairly enjoyable.