| Soft Centre 5 |
ON APRIL 14, 1912 the Titanic sank taking a reputed fortune in gold to the bottom of the sea. In the game from R & R Software, your mission is to find the wreck and to recover the gold.
To start you have to raise finance for the trip and then buy your supplies. That follows the strategy type of game where the first time you play it is rather like pot luck but subsequently you learn what is useful and what is not. Next you have to find the wreck. If you have the NASA map from the first section that will help as otherwise you may suffer the same fate as the Titanic.
Once you have found the wreck you move on to the last section of the game - finding the gold. Each of the three levels on board contains more than 150 locations and your divers must explore them. Their time is limited and if they are not careful they may meet creatures from the deep.
Titanic tries to be a jack-of-all-trades and cover as many different types of game as possible but in the end is master of none. The response times are slow, being predominantly Basic, and too much reliance is placed on random factors.
John Lambert
| TITANIC | Memory: 48K | Price: £7.95 | Gilbert Factor: 5 |
TRANS EXPRESS from the oddly-named Romantic Robot is a utility program which will allow microdrive and tape users to transfer programs freely between the two. The first use of the program is its microdrive-to-microdrive commands. From an enhanced CAT, files can be selected in any order and they are then saved in that order. That is useful for speeding of loading. The transfer can be either from drive one to drive two or the same drive, in which case you are told when to swap the cartridges.
The microdrive-to-tape section of the tape has a similar function but the programs are output to a cassette. It is a very simple way of making a security copy of a part or the complete cartridge.
Another program on the tape allows you to transfer tape programs directly to a microdrive, the program changing the relevant LOAD and SAVE commands in both Basic and code to microdrive ones. Finally, routines are included to allow tape-to-tape transfer. Both programs worked very well.
For microdrive users it is a valuable utility but its inability to copy itself means a frustrating wait while it loads, something surely it is designed to avoid. Tape users will also find uses for it. Each of the functions is available separately at £5.50, tape-to-drive and drive-to-drive together at £7.50, or all together at £9.50.
John Lambert
| TRANS EXPRESS | Memory: 16K | Price: £9.50 | Gilbert Factor: 8 |
GARDENING games are rapidly becoming a genre in the arcade-action field and Lothlorien has produced a little number with Two-Gun Turtle for the 48K Spectrum.
An armed turtle is entrusted with looking after a patch of strawberries which is assailed by a variety of mean creatures. The bugs will carry off the fruit if not driven away or destroyed.
A calendar counts the days on the bottom line and, during the winter period, snow will fall occasionally. If the turtle catches a snowflake a bonus is awarded. Movement is by definable keys or Kempston joystick.
Although the concept is simple, the action is fast and dangerous, requiring good reaction speeds and care in firing; a shot in the wrong place will wipe out a strawberry and ruin all the good work. The bugs whizz menacingly round the screen and will chase the turtle, which adds to the general tension.
The graphics are colourful and very smooth and put a fine polish on an exciting and compulsive machine code program.
Richard Price
| TWO-GUN TURTLE | Memory: 48K | Price: £5.95 | Joystick: Kempston | Gilbert Factor: 7 |
DEPRIVATION, desolation and danger are the order in the squalid urban wasteland of Scarthorpe, setting for the Richard Shepherd Software Urban Upstart. The scenario is a typical inner city area with all its attendant problems of crime and poverty. Anyone with sense or money has already left town, which is what you are trying to do. Do not think it will be easy - vicious football fans, keen-eyed coppers, even the dreadful weather, all conspire to keep you entombed in your home on Grime Street.
The program is a text adventure with graphics illustrations, responding to all the conventional inputs.
The portrayal of the town is inventive and convincing and the unexpected can occur at any time. Help is not much in evidence but if you are streetwise you could go far.
Urban Upstart is a cut above the average text adventure and should become compulsive entertainment. There are many locations, full load and save facilities and a pile of surprises.
Richard Price
| URBAN UPSTART | Memory: 48K | Price: £6.50 | Gilbert Factor: 8 |
THIS EXCELLENT program is a simulation of the popular board game 'Cluedo'. It is, however, much more than just a simulation. Events, personalities and objects are multiplied so that far more logic and careful thought are needed to reveal all the vital information about the suspects and to solve the murder.
It resembles the kind of logic problems which appear in puzzle magazines, but since you can question the computer repeatedly the less logically-minded will not be frustrated continually as they can gather as much information as they need, simply taking longer to solve the puzzle.
The mystery is different every time you play, with a random combination of the various elements and can be enjoyed equally by players of all skill levels.
Up to four people can compete to track the murderer. The only disadvantage is that the screen layout is very dull. Illustrations at relevant points would improve its appearance radically and would hold the attention of the players even longer.
John Lambert
| WHODUNNIT | Memory: 48K | Price: £2.99 | Gilbert Factor: 8 |
MOSAIC PUBLISHING has coined a new word to describe its program, The Width of The World - bookware. The game is an uninspiring text adventure, limited in the number of locations and the number of problems to solve.
You play the character Alan Roxbury, whose wife Sarah disappeared some seven years ago when over-population caused the world to expand in some mysterious way, creating gaps in the fabric of space into which Sarah disappeared. The depressing tale is told in the accompanying booklet, an unexceptional piece of writing by Ian Watson.
Your task is to discover one of the gaps, pass through it and rescue your wife. Most of the usual two-word commands are accepted by the program, which also includes a few long-winded graphics pictures of locations.
It is unlikely that many people will readily identify with a middle-aged Volvo driver who smokes Gauloises and makes maps of the world for a living. In the case of The Width of The World, for bookware read boreware.
Chris Bourne
| THE WIDTH OF THE WORLD | Memory: 48K | Price: £9.95 | Gilbert Factor: 4 |
IN GAMES of chance like dice, atmosphere can add excitement and tension. Rubbing the dice, calling on whatever weird gods you cultivate, cursing - all those contribute to the buzz.
On computers dice ends up more like a fruit machine. Yatzee from CP Software suffers inevitably from the problem. Each game consists of 13 turns, each of three throws. There are 13 scoring options and you must choose one of them each turn to get the best score from the dice which have been thrown. They include poker combinations, e.g. full house.
The instructions are clear and comprehensive and keyboard use is simple. Players can specify how many games they want to play or exit to the beginning if they wish.
The graphics are straightforward but the screen colours are a little stark, which begins to tell after half an hour's play. Although it is not the smash-hit type of program it could certainly be useful in informal or formal teaching sessions and will help children to grasp number concepts and matching.
Richard Price
| YATZEE | Memory: 48K | Price: £5.95 | Gilbert Factor: 5 |
THE CP Software ZX Draughts program offers to play you at 10 levels of difficulty. Pride, however, precedes a fall and the player who opts for the highest level will find the computer looking 10 moves ahead, with a response time of about 13 minutes for every move.
It is a game designed for the Karpovs of the draughts world. A less than mediocre player selecting the lowest grade of play was soundly beaten. The higher levels play with a degree of skill which amazed us. The cover material warns you not to he fooled by the "easy games at level 0." The level of skill the programmers clearly expect from the player is very high and we did not find the games at all easy.
The board is laid out clearly, using colours designed to be equally visible on colour and monochrome television sets, and moves are made using a co-ordinate system - i.e., 1-8 and a-h - which is used commonly in chess. The program is easy to use with excellent instructions, a rare factor in modern games programs.
John Lambert
| ZX DRAUGHTS | Memory: 48K | Price: £5.95 | Gilbert Factor: 7 |