AmigActive 10/AACD 10.iso/AACD/Information/Guides/AIOIssue35/data/gr2

Text File | 2000-03-29 | 4KB | 73 lines

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{subhead}Area 51{def}{p}
Review by Hugo Wilkinson
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Have you ever wanted to know what its like to sit in a futuristic
airship of some kind, and shoot down other futuristic aircraft? Well,
heres your chance. A bedroom programmer from Germany has introduced us
to his creation, Area 51.
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The game is in quite early developement yet, but the programmer states
that it will be released by Summer 2000. Currently, the only English
support is in the docs where you are told it MIGHT be translated to
English if there is a big enough audience. This state of developement
meant that only ONE level was included in the demo, which I think is a
bit of a shame as the game looks quite promising, especially if the
action could be sped up a bit.
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The Intro animation is not suberb and could with a little work to clear
up the music (timing is a bit out), but the graphics are quite well put
together and there are no serious flaws to talk of. The music is a sort
of jungle/techno style with some Star Trek computer samples added in for
good measure.
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You take control of a ship flying down a valley shooting the hells
bells out of every moving target on the screen. The game - sadly - is
not exactly 3D, but attempts to be as all the ships can move along x
and y dimensions, but in doing so, you get to see different sides of the
ship depending how high or low etc they are. Sort of like 3D onjects in
a 2D world. The valey you fly through is quite well rendered (I expect
with Vista), and the programmer has used a 'fog' texture cleverly so
that the valley doesn't go right back to the horizon, thus, making it
possible to loop a shorter animation (saving memory) and to put up the
FPS rate a bit (which incidently, is always stated in the TOP LEFT of
your screen!). Funnily enough, I get a reading of about 12-16FPS on an
040/25mhz, however, I do not really see any slowless or judder in the
game. So I'm not completly sure the reading is correct :/
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The overall game engine isn't half bad considering AMOS was used to
program it, however, looking at the docs - the programmer mentions
something about an 030/50mhz, which I might think means it will be
unbearably slow using anything slower than this. You also require
1.5MB chip ram, and a couple of Mb's fast ram.
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The ships are made from polygons (no doubt with AMOS's inbuilt polygon
shape handler). They also appear to be one colour, which is shaded
depending on angle and height etc.
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The enemy ships fly towards you and don't change their path at all,
which if they did, could make the game a bit more interesting.
Saying that, when you get towards the end of the level, the game does
become quite hard - but after 30mins practice, you can quite easily
finish it.
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The music is a typical style of techno. Not much to talk about there,
and there are currently no ingame SFX.
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All in all, its a promising game, which could be very good if there were
lots of varied levels and perhaps a more 3D world to play in. As it
stands, the game LOOKS promising. If the programmer could put more
effort into gameplay (perhaps adding power pick-ups etc) and keep the
level of graphics high, then it could be a darn good shoot'em-up!
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{bold}Available from{nobold}: Aminet:game/demo/a51.lha ({link ftp://uk.aminet.net/pub/aminet/game/demo/a51.LHA}Download This{end}){p}
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{bold}Graphics{nobold}      : 87%{p}
{bold}Sound{nobold}         : 79%{p}
{bold}Playability{nobold}   : 81%{p}
{bold}Lastability{nobold}   : 34%{p}
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{bold}Overall{nobold}       : 70% - Needs a REASON/STORY to play, plus more levels!  Could be good!
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