Personal Compuer Games


Starbike
By The Edge
Spectrum 48K

 
Published in Personal Computer Games #13

Starbike

Saving little alien creatures is the object of this new game and very cute they are too, these Orola. The blurb describes them as 'bouncing, yellow blobs of sentience', which is pretty accurate except for the bit about sentience.

They also have extraordinarily long antennae which wave from side to side as they do their bouncing. You arrive on a planet in your lander craft, and pop out riding the starbike. Your mission: to investigate the five sectors and rescue any Orola that might be stranded there.

To help you, there are scanners with whirling dishes. You fly through them and an arrow appears pointing the way to the stranded Orola. So, off you go on your bike. You get the Orola and take it back to the teleporter which dumps it in your ship and dumps you in another sector. When you've collected the last one, you have to get back to your ship in the time limit and escape to another planet.

Starbike

It's not easy though. The planets are full of hostile alien life forms, and the starbike's shields can only take five hits before total vaporisation.

For protection, the bike automatically emits a constant stream of laser fire. Your joystick fire button is used. not for firing, but for controlling thrust, which gives the game a strange feel on first playing.

It all sounds a bit like Lunar Jetman, and it looks even more like it. The graphics are excellent, but very Ultimate. The trouble with the game is that it gets pretty boring. Shoot, pick up, go back to ship, go to another planet and do the same thing.

The aliens are varied and some planets are more difficult than others, but it all boils down to the same thing. A bit more variety in what you have to do and the game could have been a great deal more fun.

Bob Wade

I was a little disappointed in this game because after so much hyping beforehand it presented nothing very original.

The graphics are brilliant though somewhat reminiscent of Lunar Jetman, and the action is fast and furious. The only problem is that the task of collecting Orolas doesn't make this a game to think about, just one of reflex shoot-'em-up.

On the whole, I liked the game but software has moved on from pretty graphics and laser blasting. Top class games need more than just a high score table to keep you interested. No harm in a good zap though.

Samantha Hemens

A familiar scenario pops up on the screen here. Planet, spaceship and a Jetman on his Starbike. The aliens are pretty unimaginative (although rather deadly) and the little things that need rescuing look rather like frogs with antennae.

The aim of the game seems to have been rather lost in programming since rescuing frogs with antennae and shooting aliens becomes rather monotonous after a while.

Apart from this, it's well presented, and if you enjoy endless killing, endless rescuing and frequent death, this could be for you!

Peter Connor

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