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1993-07-07
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CAPTIVE REVIEW
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CAPTIVE, by Mindscape International, is a first-person perspective RPG
game set in the distant future. Apparently, you have been accused for a
crime that you didn't commit, and have been sentenced to 250 suspended
animation. But halfway through, you are woken up by the main computer
to find yourself in a small cell. By the looks of things, there is a
full scale battle going on outside, and the computer woke you up to
save you from dying (fat lot of good that will do).
Anyway, in the corner of your cell you find a small leather briefcase.
Upon opening said briefcase, you find it to be a small remote control
unit for a group of four androids somewhere in another galaxy. You
decide that you can use these androids to escape.
At the beginning of the game, you find yourself to be in the SWAN
mothership in the centre of the galaxy. You select your first planet
BUTRE and set a course for it. On the way there, you initialize your
four droids. This is where you plug in their individual ROM circuits,
and give them their names. Here's an original idea for you: the
computer decides the droid's stats simply by what name you gave that
particular droid (and of course, some good names appeared in the cheat
lists of some magazines).
By now, you should have arrived at your planet. You then point to the
landing pad on the planet and launch your landing craft. You land on
the planet's surface, and the game is on!
DUNGEON MASTER fanatics (or generally anyone who has played a first-
person perspective game) will be familiar with this one. You get little
boxes with icons, signalling different actions. You get your control
cluster (forward, backward, turn, side-step, etc.), and your hand
contents. Along the top of the screen are five monitors. The first four
are readouts from any Optical devices that the droids may buy from a
shop in the level, whereas the fifth one is a display for the remote
camera unit (also available from the shop).
The four droids start off very weak and basic, with basic armour, no
experience, and no weapons (well, fists actually). You land outside the
base (hopefully as near to the main airlock as possible) with a
prehistoric setting. There is water (very acidic!), long grass, and
dinosaurs! Luckily the dinosaurs are pretty weak during the first few
stages of the game, and a couple of well-aimed punches will send them
packing (well, actually they will kill them).
When you finally find the airlock, you have to find the correct four-
button sequence to open the door. Once open, you step inside...and into
the first level.
Inside the level is as gloomy as any Dungeon Master coridoor, with
boring walls, boring floor, and boring ceiling. On the first level, the
coridoor ends abrubtly and there is apparently no way top pass (some
geezer wrote into a magazine complaining that he had spend 25 quid on a
game that starts you off at a cul-de-sac!) If you were to look
carefully at the wall at the end, you may notice small rollers on the
bottom. Right-click on the forward icon and you push it forwards.
You are then confronted by your first set of nasties. A vicious
combination of punches sorts them out. Once you kill a group of
enemies, you get a bag of gold which can be used later in a shop (yes,
they do have shops in prison as well!). You also get experience points
which you can use to allocate to various armour and weapon skills.
Walking around the level, you find pretty shutters in the wall. These
open up to reveal more gold bags, bouncy balls (can be thrown at
enemies or bounced around walls), codes, or a zlot! (!) Zlots are
'temporary' weapons which have a set power or ammo level. Once used up,
they disappear. Zlot-shutters also open up walls close by, letting out
another monster.
Pressing the right mouse button takes you to the droid's various
inventories, where you can place items you have collected, see what
armour you have got on, view your stats, etc. You can select what
weapon to use simply by placing it in the droid's hand. Each weapon has
only one function (either hit or fire), and can be used from either
left or right hand (contrasting to Dungeon Master). This makes a total
of eight weapons useable at a time! Unfortunately, if the people at the
back have striking weapons, they tend to hit the people in front and
not the enemy (ouch!)
Throughout the level is a combination of twisting coridoors, blue doors
and push-button doors which you can trap monsters in to cause quite a
lot of damage. You eventually come to a room with lots of pulsating
electricity generators. The destruction of these is half of your task
on each level. The other half is to find the planet probe from a
computer. And to get the planet probe you have to find the mad
professor who holds the code. And to get the code you have to kill the
mad professor (you will see what I mean by 'mad' when you hit him!)
Once the probe is collected, you buy explosives from the nearest shop,
throw the explosives at the generators, and RUN LIKE F***! If you are
lucky, you will reach the main airlock in time. From there, you have to
type in the correct sequence again to escape back outside. Then, all
you do is find your lander ship, get in, and blast off! There, level 1
done, only 64499 more....WHAT? Yes, Apparently there are 65500 levels
in Captive. Don't ask.
A few levels afterwards you will have had quite a lot of experience.
Skill points can be 'brought' using experience points. There are two
main categories of skill; weapons and robotics. Your robotics skill
determines what level of armour your droid can wear (Human armour is
the most basic, Tindron is the next, then Coppator, Bronzite, Ironide,
Chromize, Silovsh, Rosteeld, Stenforcer, and Titaniux. You get to wear
Titaniux by about level 50!)
The weapons category is split into the nine different types of weapon.
First of all, the four droids start with skill 1 in Brawling (punch-
ups). Once this is increased to 9 out of 24, you can start allocating
to the next skill, Swords, then Handguns, then Rifles, Automatics,
Lasers, Cannons, Sprayguns. There are three different weapons in each
weapon category (making 23 different weapons altogether). Each weapon
has a power rating, from BASIC to mark 8. So, someone with Sword skill
12 can use all weapons up to power 4 or the second sword weapon.
Different shops sell different gear at different prices. Each shop
generally offers these services: repair whole droid, repair body parts,
buy item off droid, or sell item to droid. You can buy weapons, armour,
ammunition, batteries, explosives, cameras, mines, balls (!), Optics,
and Dev-scapes.
Instead of your usual food and water levels in DM, you get a power
level instead. This shows how much electricity you have in you. Once
this reaches 0, you have got one run-down droid on your hands. The
place to get electricity from, believe it or not, is from power sockets
on the wall. Shove your finger in a power socket, and you can recharge
yourself! You can also fill up batteries from here to store power. You
can also partly recharge batteries from fire on later levels. Stuffing
anything else up a power socket (ahem! by way of armour, money, etc.)
will promptly burn it up!
Cameras are handy (should you have enough power), for you can put them
on the floor, and control them remotely - sending them up ahead to see
what's there before charging around a corner.
Mines can be planted on the floor, waiting for some unsuspecting enemy
(or droid who forgot they put it there!) to step on one.
Optics and Dev-scapes are small chips which the droids can plug into
their head sockets. There are eight of each type. Optics are solely for
informative purposes, while Dev-scapes modify the droid(s) in some way.
For example, the first Optic is called the AG-SCAN, and shows how much
damage you are inflicting on the opponent. The next one is the ROOT-
FINDER, and points to the way out (useful!). The third one is the
MAPPER and draws out a map as you walk along, which you can then move
around to see where you haven't been. The best of the lot is the RADAR
which shows where close-range enemies are. The next one is less useful,
the MAGNA SCAN. It points to the direction you are facing (handy if you
stand on a 'spinner'). The sixth one is the BODY-SCAN and shows quickly
which parts of your droids are injured. The penultimate one is the
VISION CORRECTOR, and reveals false walls when you are looking at them.
The final one is the VISOR, and is useful during blackouts (where,
because of the roof, the droids cannot relay their camera-view
proporly, and everything ends up blank).
The Dev-scapes are as follows: ANTI-GRAV allows you to walk on the roof
(allows you to either walk over mines and pits, or fall back up pits!)
The next one is a SHIELD, and reduces how much damage the droids
receive. Then, the FIRE-SHIELD, which filters out most of the damage
caused by fire. Then, GREASER, which speeds up the droid's movements.
The POWER-SAPPER is the least useful of the lot, as it reduces the
droid's energy to 0!. Then the FIXER, which repairs a body part up to
10% (allowing it to still be used until you find a shop to repair it).
Then, the RECHARGER, which slowly regenerates your power level.
Finally, the DEFLECTOR bounces back enemy's bullets (handy in a no-win
situation!)
Optics and Dev-scapes can be turned on and off by using a small control
panel at the bottom-right of the screen. Whenverer they are on, they
drain away the droid's energy (although most of the time te amount is
of no real matter). Optics are always on full charge, but Dev-scapes
can slowly run out; they need to be repaired.
Here are a few tables, just for the sake of it.
WEAPONS (Only Basic and Super costs are provided, not II to VII)
-------
-- COST --
NAME BASIC SUPER CLIP TYPE CLIP COST AMMO SKILL
Fists Brawling
Knuckle-Duster 49 84 Brawling
Battle Glove 99 169 Brawling
War Blade 189 259 Swords
Lyte Blade 399 469 Swords
Fire Axe 459 599 Swords
Pistol 999 1139 20mm 20 Handguns
Colt 1199 1339 45mm 50 Handguns
Magnum 1419 1559 50mm 300 Handguns
Rifle 2140 2280 45mm 50 Rifles
Shotgun 2159 2539 Cartridges 400 Rifles
Hunter 2500 2780 50mm 300 Rifles
Uzie 20mm Auto 500 39 Automatics
Rapedo 45mm Auto 600 Automatics
Booster 50mm Auto 800 Automatics
Hand-Laser 8000 8350 Laser pack 1000 20 Lasers
Lyte-zapper 8549 8899 Laser pack 1000 20 Lasers
Ion-pulse 9025 9375 Sonic pack 1500 25 Lasers
Mono cannon 10000 10700 Shells 1500 20 Cannons
A51-Launcher 11002 11702 A51 rockets 1989 15 Cannons
Twin cannon 12039 Shells 1500 20 Cannons
Aerosol Poison gas 21 Sprayguns
Acid Dispensor Acid gas Sprayguns
Flame Thrower Flambos gas Sprayguns
There, that's all of the weapons out of the way...next come the
baddies! There are about 39 different types of monster, ranging from
(these names are what I call them, because there is no real definition)
Miners, Stumps, American Footballers, Red Indians, Freds (?), Evil
Freds (??), Ships, Frogs, Robots, Fire Elementals, Flying Robots,
Professors, Porters, Droids, Tabs, Dragons, Ninja-swirls, Dogs,
Computers, Defence Flyers, Rock Piles, Globs, Laser-Gunners, Demons,
Skele-Freds (???), Battle Droids, Pulsites, Invisos, Guardians, Water
Dwellers, Dinosaurs, Pterodactyls, Stegalosauruses, Knights, Fire
Serpents, Blue Globs, Faceless Freds (????), and Mini-Dinosaurs! For
the people that already have got Captive, try to find out which
monsters I am referring to!
There are plenty of features to each level, such as coridoor, pushable
walls, blue doors, push-button doors, punch-doors, naitan security
doors, raising walls, airlocks, grates, 8-way and 16-way combination
codes, fire, water, levers, shops, computers, ladders, pits, fake
walls, lifts, and generators. Phew! You would have thought that each
level would be completely different! Sadly, not true. Although there
are three different types of wall and ceiling (four if you count the
space station at the end of every ten levels), each level tends to be
the same after a while, and the lasting appeal wears thin.
If you like this kind of game, you will be hooked for days and days,
because there is so much to do and try out. But, once you get to level
thirty or so (I am on about 35), things tend to get the same, and
because there are 65500 levels, you just give up and lose interest.
After a few levels you start to get complex combination locks,
consisting of either 8 or 16 buttons which have to be set correctly to
open up a bit of wall elsewhere. The only way to find out the code (if
you can't be bothered to guess) is to find the monster that is carrying
the code. Sometimes he/it can be on the other side of the level (gets
daunting running all of the way back to type the code in, and
sometimes, only to find that it was a total waste of time!).
Sometimes, impossible situations occur: Somewhere on the level, an
enemy detects you, so he shoots (if possible) at the wall. If there was
a raising wall there, it lifts up. A baddie which carries a vital code
walks aimlessly underneath, the raising walls comes crashing down,
kills the enemy, and crushes the code, making it impossible to find. On
most levels, you manage to explore the whole level (just to give you an
idea, for the levels 30 onwards, each floor is probably twice the size
of your average Dungeon Master floor, and there are about four or five
floors!) and find that there is nothing else to do, except for this one
code which you can't find! So you have to run around the whole level
looking for a code or a monster to kill, and get so frustrated when you
can't find it! Eventually, you give up and play something else.
The whole of Captive comes on one disk (!!), with an extra disk for
those single-sided lamers. The disk access is the fastest I have ever
seen (takes about two seconds to save out the whole level where it
takes DM about 10 to 20.) and memory usage is very efficient. The
graphics are superb, there is sampled sound to accompany most actions
(and in stereo for the STE'ers), there is catering for two drives (and
ten saved game positions) and extra memory - the whole game runs as if
from a hard drive! There are keyboard short-cuts for movement,
inventory access, etc. so if you had a friend that liked the game, you
could have one person doing the moving, and one person doing the
shooting (like I do).
So, to finally sum up: Captive is a game of high quality. Everything is
superb: gaphics, sound, playability. There is so much to each level by
way of content, things to do, different weapons and armour to try out,
a wide variety of baddies...the only let-downs are the ever-recurring
levels, the impossible bits, and the "spending hours one one level
trying to find what you have missed".
I would rate this game very highly, between 80 and 90%. It is good for
the first few months, but you eventually lose interest, and leave it on
the shelf to collect dust and rot. Shame, that.
Article: BLACK EAGLE 7/7/93