/// Usenet Review:  Shadow of the Beast 3
    -------------------------------------
    By Rob Morton
    (morton@wam.umd.edu)


PRODUCT NAME

        Shadow of the Beast 3


BRIEF DESCRIPTION

        Shadow of the Beast 3 (known for the rest of this article as Beast 3)
is a side scrolling action game with puzzles, just to keep the mind working.


AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

        Name:           Psygnosis
        Address:        29 Saint Mary's Court
                        Brookline, MA 02146
                        USA

                        South Harrington Street
                        Sefton Street
                        Liverpool, United Kingdom L3 4BQ

        Telephone:      (617) 731-3553 (USA)
                        051-709 5755


LIST PRICE

        Probably around $50.00.


COPY PROTECTION

        Oh yeah. This game has disk based copy protection. I make backups
of all my software using hardware copiers, and compared to other Psygnosis
games this was milder.


MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

        A2000, 3 Megs of RAM, Kickstart 1.3
        A500, 1 Meg RAM, Kickstart 2.04
        A1000, 512K RAM, Kickstart 1.2


REVIEW

        Well, I hated the original Shadow Of The Beast, because it was just
an arcade game with great graphics.  Beast 2 had average graphics, with
puzzles, but without using cheats it was way too hard.  Beast 3 on the other
hand seems to have the graphics and the puzzles.  The puzzles start out easy
and progressively get more difficult.  It is the type of game that you can
get better and the movements, so the levels that are hard at first become
easier to do later.

        By getting easier with skill, it makes the game possible to
complete, but makes the game not have as much replayability.  You can see
everything there is to see pretty quickly. I am not saying that it has no
enjoyment after solving it, because I still enjoy playing it now, but I do
not play it anywhere nearly as much as before.

        Controlling your character is very easy.  It is all joystick control
except for switching between items, and that does not have to be done in the
heat of battle.  I think by the time they got to the third Beast game,
Psygnosis learned all of the tricks to programming a well controlled
character and still leaving the graphics speed and sound intact.


DOCUMENTATION

        The manual is very well organized.  It starts out with the story of
what you have done so far, and what is still left to do.  After this they
explain the controls very well.  That is about all the documentation, but it
is also all that is needed.


LIKES AND DISLIKES

        Well if it is not too obvious by now, I liked this game. It was fun.
There are not that many games that I like; actually, when my computer is on I
rarely play games.  For some reason, I just enjoyed this one.  I am not the
most skilled player for strategy, and am not that quick on shooters, and I
found this game well made for my game-playing ability.  I love graphics, and
this game has them.  Some of the backgrounds were astonishing.  I also liked
the music.  It did not get annoying like some games do.

        The main thing I did not like was that it had disk based copy
protection.  This is an outdated concept that needs to be done away with.  I
will not buy a game that has it (my roommate owns Beast 3).  It is also
completely useless (I made backups of this game fairly easily).  It should
also be hard drive installable.  The last thing that many people would
probably like is for the game to be slightly harder and maybe longer.  Longer
I would like but not really harder.

        For all future games, I hope Psygnosis either learns that people have
hard drives, or starts puttings its games on CD-ROM discs.  This would make
the games bigger, and left on one disk.  I really hate disk swapping.


COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

        This game has the graphics of Shadow of the Beast, and the puzzles
from Shadow of the Beast 2.  It is perfectly detailed.  There really are no
other games that have held my attention long enough to finish them, so I
would have to say it is one of the best games I have played.


BUGS

        None that I have found.


VENDOR SUPPORT

        I never needed to talk to Psygnosis for anything.


WARRANTY

        The warranty is that they guarantee the disks work, and are free
from any viruses.


CONCLUSIONS

        The game is great. I rate this game a 4 out of 5.  If they removed
the copy protection, then they would have had a 5.

Rob Morton