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chaoseng.doc
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Text File
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1993-07-28
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6KB
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120 lines
THE CHAOS ENGINE REVIEW
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(At last! An up-to-date review!) There's been a lot of hype about the
Chaos Engine, written by the Bitmap Brothers. The question is, does the
game meet with it's expectations. Well, the answer to that one is,
well, yes it does.
TCE comes on two disks, along with a large manual (11 pages for
English), a little wallet containing cards with information about the
six fighters, and some hints. There is also a little slip of white
paper listing the limitations of the Atari version.
The storyline behind TCE is that some years ago a professor who
experimented in space and time managed to create some sort of machine.
Although primitive, the machine slowly advanced, and turned on it's
master. Now, it is wreaking havoc over the world, turning men and
animals alike into mutant savages. "Enter six hard-nailed mercenaries
for hire".
If you have an STE, you get a really beefy Noisetracker tune with a
description of the storyline and the characters.
The game is always for two players, although the second player can
either be computer-controlled or another-human-controlled. At the
beginning, you can select which of the six heroes you wish to control,
from the NAVVIE, THUG, MERCENARY, BRIGAND, GENTLEMAN, PREACHER. Of
course, each has his strengths and weaknesses, like skill, speed,
intelligence, and health. Each person also carries a different weapon,
which slowly improves in it's own way when you collect power-ups.
Each person also has his own special weapons which range from First Aid
Kits, Maps, Mines, and Distractors, to Molotov Cocktails, Dynamite,
Bombs, and Shot Bursts.
There are four worlds, and each world has four sub-levels. Each level
is a multi-directionally scrolling overhead view of your characters,
and the surrounding landscape. Using your joystick, you manoeuvre your
character around the screen, blasting down hordes of baddies, shooting
nodes which open exits and stuff, and collecting treasure, food, power-
ups, special weapons, and keys.
Silver keys are needed to progress through the level, as they open up
the way to continue. Gold keys, on the other hand, only open up special
bonus sections and are not necessary to completing the level.
On some levels there are more than one exit. Each exit is labelled A,
B, or C, and if you can get to the best one, you start off in a better
position on the next level. Once a level is complete you get a
statistics screen which shows what percentage of the keys, treasure,
monsters, doors, and nodes you got. You also get the player
percentages, showing who got the most and who got the least. In a two-
player game, this is handy because you can make sure you are both
playing 'fair' and are getting an equal amount of cash. In a one-player
game you just collecting everything and hope the computer doesn't mind.
(Although, some characters tend to grab everything before you get the
chance. People like the Gentleman only collect what they need and leave
the rest to you.)
You may think this is all very well, leaving the poor old computer
nothing left, but remember this: if the computer is weak, he will get
killed, and you will be left on your own to get killed. So, keep the
computer strong and you will do fine.
After two levels, you are taken to the inevitable 'shop' where you can
buy yourself extra lives, extra skills, more special weapons, and
weapon power-ups. The same rules as 'Speedball 2' are included here
when it comes to increasing stats; you can only increase one stat if
the other stats are up to the same level. The readouts get confusing
because there are three bars; the green one shows your current level,
the brown one shows the current maximum level, and the yellow one shows
the absolute maximum of the character.
I mentioned earlier about a little white slip of paper detailing the
limitations of the Atari version of TCE. This gets me very annoyed.
Here are some of the limitations: You only get the password to the
next world after every four levels and not after every two. There
is no sampled speech in ST versions "due to hardware limitations"!
WHAT? I've never head as much bo**ocks in my life! The STE's got bloody
DAC and DMA chips and stereo sound up to 50KHz and you say "hardware
limitations"! You just can't be bothered can you? You just say "Oh
ST's...they're a bit like the Spectrum aren't they so I don't think
they can cope with the odd sampled sound effect." ST's are bloody
FASTER than Amiga's for God's sake! Oh I give up. At least they
seem to have noticed the advanced features of the STE by saying that
TCE will run on any STE, but only on a 1 Meg ST.
Right, calm down David, I haven't finished yet.
The sound effects are pretty crap, consisting of hisses and wheezes,
the usual you expect from bloody software houses who don't realise HOW
BLOODY EXCELLENT THE STE IS! YOU DON'T EVEN GET A BLOODY 'PING' WHEN
YOU SHOOT A BULLET!!!
CALM DOWN!!
Now then.
{deep inhale} {deep exhale}
Where was I? Erm. Oh yeah, the graphics are excellent, (oh really? Good
Lord!) with each character having his own sprite, and set of
animations. The sound effects ARE UTTER BOLLO {snip - Ed!). The
gameplay is excellent - sometimes strategic as you try to figure out
how the hell to open up a certain bonus section, but most of the time
FRANTIC with plenty of nasties to eliminate (on world 3 you even get to
shoot at yourself!) and gear to collect. The special weapons add an
extra interest to the game, and are handy for wiping out lots of
enemies. The only drawback there is that by the time you have held down
the trigger to set one off, you are either dead or could have shot them
all anyway!
To sum up, this is another cracker by the Bitmap Brothers consisting of
the usual excellent quality graphics and gameplay that now come
familiar with the name. The Chaos Engine is defineately the best shoot
'em up I have seen yet, and only the BBs themselves can excel this
product! (You even get some posters in the box!)
Article: BLACK EAGLE 25/7/93