C&VG


W.A.R.
By Martech
BBC Model B

 
Published in Computer & Video Games #66

W.A.R.

A race of hostile aliens who live and travel in huge, complex cylinder-shaped worlds are bearing down on Earth. The religion of this people, says the blurb, is the conquest of lesser worlds.

Several missions from Earth have already failed to stop the cylinders, so it's all down to you in your hi-tech military spaceship. The idea is to attack each cylinder and destroy it from within.

There's just one snag. The cylinders are defended by Droidan patrols who naturally take exception to your activities. So in addition to destroying the ground installations in each cylinder, you must also fend off the persistent Droidans.

W.A.R.

A familiar scenario, but the graphics are snazzy. You play in a small playing area, a kind of window on the screen, with the cylinder in impressive close up behind. It looks good, but after a while you begin to feel constructed by the rather cramped dimensions of the playing area.

The movement is standard up, down, left, right, fire and you get auto-fire if you hold down the Return key. You move on to the next screen by hitting as many ground and flying targets as possible. There are two games, with game two being harder to play than game one (which is difficult enough!).

It's well presented and challenging to play, but the 'window' idea doesn't really work. Nice try, but there just isn't enough room for the action to really open up.