Producer: Alligata
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Richard Stevenson

As pilot of an Intergalactic battle cruiser, you have penetrated a place where human life strains to exist. Your mission is to defend your home planet against your once peaceful ally. The problem you are faced with is this: can aggression and mindless violence further the cause of peace which you are trying to restore? A tricky question to answer, but being the hero that you are you must succeed and prove yourself worthy as a legendary space fighter.

Your life endangering mission is split into three parts, each testing various aspects of your skills. The first section tests your manoeuvring and reflex capabilities in flight. The enemy have launched a hail of volatile space mines which your ship has either to avoid or obliterate. To aid this task, your battle cruiser is equipped with the latest in trendy high powered space blasters.

Having survived the shower of mines, you find yourself flying over the Zarkab Valley - a test of courage, complete with rivers and rapids. There are three forms of invading enemy which have to be destroyed: meteors; alien craft, which can be attacked from the front or annihilated with a quick blast of your exhaust pipe; and lasers which flit across the valley and have to be cut off before you can proceed. Accompanying these meanies are an assortment of aliens, such as a fleet of Police Craft.

The final part of the test places you far from your craft on a distant plain. This is designed to test your stealth and determination on foot, and is reminiscent of Commando in that you have to battle your way through the undergrowth, blowing everything to smithereens. Most important here is the collection of spherical objects which are in fact Orbs, the currency of the future. With sufficient Orbs you can buy a more powerful space craft which will help you as your quest continues.

Your score is displayed alongside the playing area and also shows the amount of lasers, boats and aliens which have to be destroyed.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q/A speed up/down, O/P left/right, SPACE fire, A/SPACE drop bomb
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Use of colour: lots, but it's badly used
Graphics: reasonable, but rather confusing
Sound: no tune and reasonable spot effects
Skill levels: one
Screens: 14

The Spectrum is not famous for its shoot 'em ups. There have been a couple of outstanding ones, but even more have failed - Trap is simply another one to add to that pile. The area of the screen the game is actually played on is ridiculously small, I can't imagine what the point behind this is - especially as the score and status board takes up nearly a third of the screen! As far as I can see, it isn't worth converting reasonable Commodore shoot 'em ups onto the Spectrum... as they never seem to reach their full potential.
RICHARD

I wasn't really looking forward to this, and I should have listened to my instincts and stayed away it's extremely unplayable. The screen contains the most appalling mix of colours you could dream, it's like playing a shoot 'em up in a trifle. I had great difficulty in distinguishing the characters from the scenery. Basically, I would feel sorry for anyone buying Trap.
PAUL

On playing Trap, my mind kept jumping to Xevious - I wonder why?! The game isn't up to much, and I think that ALLIGATA's advertising has been a little bit immodest - they seem to be putting a lot of effort behind a game which doesn't really deserve it. The shading on the planets in the first bit of the game is pretty appalling, even given the limitations of the Spectrum. Come to think of it, my comparison between Trap and Xevious isn't really accurate - I much prefer the latter.
MIKE

Alligata
£7.95

Well, blow me down - it's Alligata's answer to Lightforce. Actually, that's probably not the best thing to say, 'cos the aliens in Trap have been doing a lot of blowing me down lately, and up. This is the latest in a long line of vertical scrolling shoot 'em ups, but don't run screaming 'cos this one's pretty nifty!

But is it violent? Sure is, pardner. Fourteen levels of multicoloured action stand between you and your goal and you'll need to be a whizz with the stick if you're going to get even a quarter of the way there. Hey, but look at those graphics! With all that definition and colour, surely there's no room in the Spec's tiny brain for speed, size and all that crazy jazz music, eh hep cat? But Trap has it all, though heaven knows how.

Hands up who's played a shooter whose simple aim is the destruction of the evil and fearsome mother ship which has been terrorizing your planet. I thought so. Well, in Trap there's more. On every level you're given a certain number of alien thingies to fry (the number increases, natch).

On level 1 there are ten alien ships to kill, two boats to bomb and one laser to knock out. All need different techniques. When they're all dealt with, the border turns red and you head for the landing pad. Now you switch to foot for the final part of your quest to collect the orb (the game's currency) and move on to level 2. As you pick up orbs, you can upgrade your spacecraft to something a bit zappier, which'll help on the higher levels.

Pass over cargo ships and you'll pick up cargo that you can drop over the little men for extra lives. Replenish your fuel by bombing the fuel dumps. And don't bother about shooting the space mines at the beginning 'cos there aren't any points for 'em.

Trap isn't your everyday shoot 'em up. There are a few problems with colour definition, and it can be difficult to get used to the changing colours of the alien vessels. But get used to it you will, and from then on in it's a thoroughly rewarding zapper. Okay, you can put your hands down now.

Label: Alligata
Author: Richard Stevensen and David Wright
Price: £7.95
Joystick: Kempston
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Gary Rook

Have you noticed how games have been getting smaller recently? Whole chunks of screen disappear to be filled with scrolls or very very large score tables. The actual playing area, meanwhile, is up in the top left-hand corner. Probably some technical explanation...

I bring up the subject in the case of Trap because it too has a diminished screen and enormous scores. It reminds me in a general way of Terra Cresta and its ilk - not a rip-off but the same kind of up down scrolling, blast that, bomb this, avoid that, opus.

Level 1 is barely a level, as such, at all. You hurtle through space avoiding space mines before arriving at the planet proper. It's not too difficult and just gives you a chance to get going and gain the misleading impression that you're going to be good at the game.

Level 2 is the crux of the affair. A Terra Cresta-like battle across a scrolling landscape chock fill of missile launching alien crafts, defensive barrier thingys that zip back and forth, round things that kill you, cell-like things that kill you and so on. There are boats in rivers to be bombed lasers to be destroyed and smart bombs called Zammo(s). To complete the level you need to reach certain scores on aliens blasted, boats bombed and lasers obliterated.

Then you go on to Level 3 which is where you walk about the planet surface collecting Orbs and dodging holes. Why? Read on.

One of the more twiddly aspects of the game is the way, using Orbs you have collected, you can, (at the beginning of each round) buy yourself a new spaceship.

The graphics are fair - standard design aliens but OK. Though the landscape scroll is a little jerky it does contain a fair amount of detail. Personally. I found the whole thing a bit garish.

One definite negative point in an undecided sort of review - the additional sound on the 128K version of the game is very odd indeed, like a chorus of deranged Mugwies.

Alligata
£8.95

I got off to a good start with Trap. I loaded it up, left a bit in the dark by the uninformative cassette inlay, and found myself unable to get the game started after selecting joystick control. The instructions weren't any help so I ended up thumping away at the keyboard trying to find the right key. Once I got going I found that the game doesn't seem to respond to the 128/+2's own Sinclair interface so I had to unplug and start loading again, this time with a Kempston interface (again, there's no hint of this in the instructions).

I eventually got the whole thing loaded and working, and came face to face with a fairly passable shoot 'em up. Trap is very much in the mould of most space zap games since the release of Lightforce. You start off with a short space flight in which you have to dodge or destroy waves of space mines. Then, as you reach your destination you fly over a valley in which you have to destroy lasers on the ground and boats in the river below, as well as combating alien forces in the air. The third part of the game has you on foot, attempting to collect orbs (which represent currency/points of some sort).

Once you have completed these tasks you go through them again, though this time at a higher difficulty level and with the option of selecting larger, more powerful ships of your own depending on your score in earlier games.

It's all quite professionally done but a bit lacking in originality. I know that you're meant to judge each game on its own merits, but like so many recent shoot 'em ups, Trap reminds me of Lightforce but without the same level of high-speed addictiveness.