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Falcon 030 Power 2
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1997-07-31
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149 lines
<PICLOAD>REVIEWS.DAJ
<PICSHOWD>000,113,272,199,016
POWER UP
Review by Dave...
After a bit of a wait getting this from the Maggie team it's time for ST+ to
do a bit of reviewing on this all new driving game... Distributing through
Floppyshop here in the U.K. MC soft and Empty heads new racing sim is here,
it's an overhead racing game with some interesting features.
THE GAME:
As with a multitude of other racing sims the overall objective it wo win as
many races as possible.
The overhead view makes for an uninteresting challenge but, I'll leave that
for the gameplay part of this review.
Editing your own name into the drivers tables is all par for the course as per
any driving game however, the use of Aryton Senna's name was, in my opinion
grossly unthoughtful. Maybe it was meant as a tribute, nothing was mentioned.
SOUND:
Very nice, fully configurable from the main menu, this means that you can
choose whether to have sound present and also choose how it's played back
Yamaha soundchip, DMA sound, Stereo master cart ect. The music on the menu
screens ect is nice, very nice only it fades [rather dismally] out when your
about to race.
You have an option to set the music quality to either low to ultra high, the
benefits of a low music quality is a speedup in CPU free time, to be honest all
this does is speed up the main menu displays.
The cars 'engines' themselves leave a lot to be desired though, it seems
strange to me that so much attention was focused on the main intro/menu ect.
only to leave the cars sounding like a bad night chilli [I use my mate, Jerry
as a reference here (cheers matey :))]
GFX:
This is where the Powerup falls down, they are, to say the least, VERY dull,
I've seen a few games in my time as ST+ editor and this doesn't rate highly as
far as graphics go....
The menu screen are nicely done however, the game graphics themselves are a
complete letdown, the cars are uninspiring, the tracks are hardly works of art
and the background scenery looks like something released back in the mid 80's,
nothing here to set out powerup from any other overhead driving sim, don't get
me wrong, they are very detailed but they look sooo dull.....
GAMEPLAY:
If the graphics were not enough to put you off powerup then the gameplay will,
Power up performs very sluggishly, the speed of the cars are not at all
accurately judged, from 1st gear you can match the 'competitors' cars speed,
into second and you seem to actually slow down before rocketing into [of if
your lucky, PAST] your opponents cars.
Trying to negotiate the various tracks is a game in itself because there is a
very limited view ahead of your car, trying to anticipate a corner you know is
there is all very well as far as gameplay is concerned but for me, it doesn't
do any favours for the game, I think the coders of Power Up concentrated more
on showing the relative position of the cars rather than what's actually
happening around YOU!.
Collisions with the competitors are all par for the course but it seemed that
they were almost pre-programed to drive directly in your path, I was saying
above how hard it is to judge the corners, well, the same is true for the
computer controlled cars, they literally drive in your path, it's appear to me
as if they deliberately cut you up when approaching a corner and try with al
their might to ram you off the road...then again, maybe I'm just paranoid...:)
Control is either by Joypad [for those with an STe], Joystick or keyboard
though, I recommend the Joypad simply because...well, there are so few Joypad
compatible games for the STe :)).
MISCELLANEOUS:
Power Up will not run under NVDI, apparently NVDI does cause a few problems
with quiet a few non-gem programs so this is not a downside, Power Up will
however run happily from a hard drive, I use the ICD driver software v6.5.5.
and power up has never yet complained.
You also must run powerup from low resolution if you want to create and/or
edit your track, failier to do this results in an error message being
displayed.
There is also a password system to let you play levels you left earlier.
Power up comes complete with custom disk labels and a black and white
illustrated manual which contains all the information you'll need, including
some of the points I've mentioned here....
THE RATINGS GAME:
GRAPHICS : 54% - Boring......
SOUND : 89% - for the main menu's ect. 24% for the ingame sound FX.
GAMEPLAY : 46% - More work should have been done.
LONGEVITY : 35% - There are far better PD alternatives, let alone
commercial.
VALUE FOR MONEY : 47% - At least you get a printed manual....albeit black and
white.
OVERALL : 48% - Really nothing special, get it because it's new.
<PICSHOWD>000,097,320,105,000
OTHER ALTERNATIVES:
HOT WHEELS - PD
CRAZY CARS - COMMERCIAL
Power up is available from Floppyshop direct, contact them at:
Floppyshop,
PO Box 273,
Aberdeen,
AB15 8GJ,
Scotland,
U.K.
.....and cheques/PO's should be made payable to Floppyshop. Credit card payment
welcome.
Please quote ST+ 19 review when ordering - Thank you.