C&VG
1st February 1984
Acheron's Rage
If you're a fan of Asteroids then you'll probably like this version of the game for the Oric.
You've hyperspaced, says the cassette inlay, into a sector where scanners revealed no sentient life-forms. Suddenly... warships of the Gor are materialising all around you. In reality, though, it's an asteroids-type game.
The playing area consists of the whole screen, apart from a thin border and also a large shaded block in the middle. On the screen is your ship and a number of aliens, or Gor ships as Softek likes to call them. The idea is to destroy all of the Gor ships and then to move on to the next level. The block in the middle of the screen makes manoeuvring quite difficult, though.
There are three types of Gor ships. Some will try to ram you, some have the power to fire back, while others will lay mines. Running over one of these will result in your destruction.There are four skill levels in the game. Even on level one I thought that the playing area was too small - there's just not enough room with all those aliens to manoeuvre your ship. You get three lives to start, and an extra one after clearing every six waves.
Control of the game is via the keyboard. There are five main controls - to rotate in two directions, fire, accelerate and brake - but you can't move and fire at the same time so a joystick option would be useful.
This is certainly not the best game that I've seen for the Oric, although the graphics are quite good in places. The Gor ships move very smoothly and flap their wings, but the player's ship rotates badly in large steps.
Sound effects are included, but are quite limited. There's one sound for firing and another for when the player's ship is destroyed. It's quite loud and there's no volume control, but you can turn it off completely if you want.
If you like this sort of game, then this is worth the money, but it's not one that I'd come back to very often. Acheron's Rage runs on a 48K Oric and costs £6.95.
