Commodore User


Eagles
By Hewson Consultants
Commodore 64

 
Published in Commodore User #45

Eagles

Unfortunately this isn't Andrew Braybrook's latest production, but it's still a very nice split screen, horizontally-scrolling, shoot-'em-up from some people from a company called Danish Designs.

It is now the year 2846 the setting of the horrific war which has raged for over 300 years. The only difference from conventional war today is that it is being fought by genetically created soldiers who destroy anything that moves, or doesn't.

Your mission is to fly across the planet's battle-scarred surface to intercept the alien attack squad and retrieve message droids. This is all very well but you are the only remaining Eagle pilot so the future of the world weighs heavy upon your shoulders.

Eagles

The one player game is similar to Dropzone in that you have to bomb round that plant wasting aliens collecting message droids, and then dropping them down a pipe to safety. The bottom half of the screen is occupied by the computer-controlled fighter who is trying to beat you to the message droids. If you can collect and deliver five droids you can obtain a devastator device which acts simply like a smart bomb. At the end of the level, you take on the Zeta fighter and if you manage to defeat it you receive a fat bonus or, alternatively, death.

The two player game has two modes, team game or head to head. I'll deal with the team game first. The two players have six lives between them and each time one loses a life, so does the other and at the end of the level player one goes on to combat the Zeta fighter.

The head-to-head is as you might expect it, both players battle it out to grab as many droids as possible and cause more death in the alien ranks than each other. At the end of the level, the Zeta fighter is replaced by player 1.

The graphics on the landscape are very good with a multitude of evil aliens, each one willing to turn you in to dust.

A large stumbling block with Eagles is that the playing area is too small, it's so easy to be zapped in the limited amount of space you have, that it tends to make the game slightly off-putting. The sound is pretty weak but the gameplay is really the opposite.

Eagles is a brill game - so good that I even let my sister into my room to play the two player option with me. If Danish Designs can turn out software as good as Eagles, they'll be bringing home the bacon for Hewson for some time.

Mark Patterson

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