Crash
1st February 1991
Exterminator
It's no easy life being a bug exterminator, but utmost loathing of creepy crawlies should give you the determination to succeed in Audiogenic's latest: seven levels, each one a houses, filled with more bugs than you could swing a fly swatter at!
Each house consists of five areas: a bathroom, a basement, a garage, a kitchen, a bedroom and an attic. Your objective is to move from room to roam swatting the horrid things that lurk there. An optional two player mode has been included if you feel you need moral support.
Each exterminator takes control of a disembodied hand which can perform several tasks. You can hire a gun, pound the insects to pieces or grab and attempt to squash them, The game is viewed vertically with the current room stretching up the screen, your attackers zooming down at a vast rate of knots. These take on many guises and include wasps, spiders, rats, frogs and mosquitoes.
Along the bottom of the screen is a list of rooms; still unvisited: the idea (apart from killing bugs) is to squash the ground based creatures on one lane of tiles. Each death turns one tile black and when they're all the same colour you move to the room indicated. Erm... it's easier to play than explain.Energy is lost through; contact with the creatures, but juice bottles occasionally appear to lop you up: also watch out for the secret warp that takes you to the next house.
Exterminator is based on an arcade coin-op: I've seen it and it looks well weird... very much like the computer conversion. Graphics have been digitised from the arcade parent, and are very detailed. The going is tough. While the first few rooms are fairly easy to clear, by the time you reach the second house the action is fast and furious. Exterminator is a load of fun - even if it is a little strange.
MARK ...86%
Nick ... 78%
'Exterminator is one weird game! You play the part of an exterminator (believe it or not!) and have to rid the houses in the game of all their bugs. You do this by either grabbing, shooting or pounding them to death (lovely). To add extra annoyance there are also things you cannot kill easily. Bees come up and sting you if you don't shoo them away, tanks fire at you and you can even get shot by a squirty bottle! The backgrounds used on each of the rooms in the house are excellent, packed full of detail and all in glorious 3D. There are also a few tunes and ditties to listen to. Exterminator is no ordinary shoot-'em-up: prepare to play something a little different. Fast and frantic action all the way!'
