We'd rather eat Slu

Producer: Gremlin
Road Tax: £7.99 cass, £12.99 disk
Author: Sentient

After a biological holocaust, food is in short supply. So mad scientist Dr A Noid invents Slu - the ultimate junk food, addictive and very bad for you. But, unlike in real life, Dr A Noid is not rewarded by a chain of fast food restaurants, instead he is to be assassinated by you!

Driving your All Terrain Vehicle around three towns, you can drive into buildings and explore them on foot, collecting useful objects and avoiding mutants. Collected food parcels can be swapped at gas stations for weapons, ammunition and fuel.

An entry pass must also be found to enter the Arena, a circuit high above the ground. Here, the idea is to ram other cars over the edge while avoiding a similar fate. Surviving takes you to the next town. At the end of the third Arena, you may finally take on Dr A Noid himself.

Sounds interesting? Well, it is my unfortunate duty to inform you that Motor Massacre is an awful game. The main problem is the infuriating multiload when your sole life is lost, a whole section must be reloaded. Graphics are simplistic and blocky, while the hero walks as if battling against a hurricane! Gremlin have produced some good games in their time; sadly this is isn't one of them.

MARK [31%]

THE ESSENTIALS
Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: the car looks like it's going backwards and the colour schemes are appalling
Sound: Quick grandma, fetch my hearing aid!
Options: definable keys

The basic concept is interesting, so it's a shame it's been so poorly implemented. Sound is weak, and the graphics are a mess. Wobbly sprites stagger around garishly coloured screens: red and white yuk!. This untidiness carries through to the gameplay. Searching buildings is uneventful, while driving sections are only marginally more interesting. The sole challenge appears in the Arena section - but with only one life you're almost certain to die. Any further interest in the game is killed stone dead by the appalling multiload system.
PHIL [28%]

Gremlin
£7.99 cass/£12.99 disk
Reviewer: David McCandless

Dr. A. Noid (certified mad scientist) thought he could conquer the world by manufacturing a totally addictive food substitute called Slu and getting the entire population of the world hooked on it. The problem was it worked. Slu replaced money, and money became paper. Whole cities were trapped by their addiction. Slu-junkies in killer cars roamed the street, hoping to dismember any unlucky Sunday drivers in an effort to find some Slu.

So a price is put on Dr. Noid's demented head. And you're a bounty hunter. And you've got an Armoured Tactical Vehicle (ATV to you), armed with a 50mm cannon and a battering ram. And Dr. Noid has sealed the cities so no one can punch his ticket. And you've got to break through three cities before you can punch the aforementioned ticket. And why not?

You have to steer your ATV around the city, searching out the elusive packets of Slu, avoiding Kamikaze cars, splattering mutant zombies on nearby buildings. Your ultimate aim is to find an Arena ticket and win the Arena race to proceed to the next sprawling metropolis.

Slu is a very important commodity. With it, you can restock on petrol and ammunition, and also tack some versatile hardware onto your aged ATV Things like turbochargers, airbrakes and battlearmour.

You see an aerial view of the city, mapped out as a grid of scrolling roads and buildings. You direct the aerial view of your car around tight corners and over bridges, keeping your eyes peeled for oil slicks, land mines and barricades.

The graphics are terrible. The buildings are just diagrammatic blocks and your car is a horrible collection of blocks. It only has eight points of direction so turning into a right angled comer is nearly impossible without colliding into a wall. And, to make matters worse, all the corners are right angled. The scrolling is smooth but the car is just so unwieldy. When the enemy cars spot you they surround you and won't budge until you shoot them.

Any addictiveness and challenge there might've been is lost in the frustration caused by the terrible graphics and control system. It's sheer disgust that puts this cassette on the shelf.

Label: Gremlin
Author: Sentient Software
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

Right. Let's get my major gripe about this game out of the way first of all. The loading system is very stupid. Even in 128K mode you continually have to rewind the tape when you've been killed, even if you have progressed to no further levels which may have filled up the machine (through subsequent level-loads). There is apparently no good reason for this and it is very stupid and annoying, especially if you haven't got a tape counter, as I believe most Plus 2 owners don't.

Unfortunately, nothing happened while I was playing the game to make up for this steaming error, and the longer I searched for the Big Redeeming Feature (I think we'll use BRFs more in future) the more frustrated and disappointed I became. Still, I'll try to remain calm and explain my gripes.

The plot. Biochemical Holocaust. Not much food. Doctor A. Noid (zzzz) starts distributing addictive expensive food substitute and taking over the world. Nomadic drivers scavenge for food and petrol. Doc's empire spreads, zombiefying most of the populace. You must track him down and destroy him.

The game is a little confusing at the start. Initially you're shown a plan view of the current city areas. Driving your car is straightforward and the screen scrolls in four directions perfectly acceptably. The control options are a bit naff, though. It's a rotate left/right accelerate/decelerate affair. On the ST or Amiga you've got an option of N.E.S.W. directional control, but on the Spec you're stuck with it.

While the graphics are certainly anything but spectacular, they're smooth and quick and you can tell - largely - what everything is. Having said that, I couldn't remember which was the front of my car, though, and kept reversing into things. It's similar to Ocean's Miami vice in style. The bad guys will ram you and damage your car. You can either avoid or shoot them. All the time you're looking for food malls and other buildings; one of which contains a pass to The Athena, where the Doc is to be found.

Once you enter a mall, the screen changes as you leap from your car into a Gauntlet-style run-around and shoot the hundreds of bad guys affair. This is a bit more like it! The baddies squish into the floor when you plug them and there are lots of keys to find and rooms to explore. Even if there is no Arena pass to be found, it's worth exploring 'cos you could find some scraps of real food which you can trade for auto parts at... The Gas Station.

Even in post/holocaust society the gas station attendants are very polite, so long as you keep them happy with food, and you can fix up your car with a host of extra features. Well, four add-ons. Almost half those listed in the instructions aren't available on the Spectrum. These make you go faster, shoot further and stop quicker. You get the idea.

The final stage involves a demolition derby around the arena, taking out enemy cars as quick as you like.

Motor Massacre is a perfectly reasonable game idea, horribly let down by some truly ridiculous flaws. The eternal re-loading is farcical, the controls for the Street section irritating and there are other annoying inconsistencies. Try to climb down the stairs which produce the bad guys in the malls prompts the message "You have fallen to your death." Presumably people forgot how to do complicated things like negotiate staircases during the holocaust. Pah.

Gremlin, Spectrum version reviewed, £7.99cs £14.99dk.

The world of the future is short of food, so the evil Dr A Noid has started pumping out a synthetic foodstuff that turns out to be addictive. It's down to you to confront the Doc and tell him where to get off.

Finding him involves driving around several cities in your ATV (Armoured Tactical Vehicle) collecting food and fuel with which to survive, and hopefully tracking down a special pass in each city. This pass will take you into the arena to enter a manic demolition derby where you must ram enemy cars to destroy them, and so eventually progress to the next city.

Collecting objects involves driving the ATV into a building and then leaving the vehicle so that you can wander around corridors, avoiding nasties and collecting bits and pieces that you should hopefully be able to trade in for car repairs and the like.

This is a nice idea with plenty in favour of it, but unfortunately the whole thing is poorly executed. The gameplay is something of a disappointment and you will have to be very determined to get anywhere near completing the game.