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Review: Unknown Game 3759
Author: David Newton (DavidN)
Added: 03/12/2003
Overall:
Average:3.5/10

Well, for a start, having your game install to "C:\Program Files\MyProduct" really doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in your program. Unfortunately I had just installed Opera and was trying to get used to it, so by the time I'd downloaded the game I'd completely forgotten what it was called, so I decided naming the directory "cabbage" would be a suitable alternative.

After reminding myself that I was playing Starboy II, I started it up and was greeted with a strange logo that seemed to be two fonts overlaid on each other, the music from Captain Scarlett and the "Yippee!" noise that one of the Lemmings makes when it exits a level.

The controls screen includes a button that allows you to restart the level if something goes wrong, but the way it was put made it sound as if it was due to bugs in the game rather than if you found that you'd worked yourself in to an inescapable corner.

The story is presented using mostly library graphics, and contains no text whatsoever, just a series of pretty much still images depicting what's going on. They don't really convey much, though - the gist of it is that aliens have captured the star people, or something. Anyway, a platform game doesn't have to have an in-depth plot, so it's on to the game.

It opens with the main character, a star which slides along the level with no walking or jumping animations, trying to escape from some sort of alien installation or something like that, which looks suspiciously like the "Atomic Zone" from Zeb (which seemed to be named to make you think you were playing Sonic the Hedgehog). You attack by belting the Ctrl key and jumping around, hoping you'll hit an alien or two. If so, they explode rather a lot.

You also have to save other stars from their chains suspended from the ceiling, and collect other, lesser stars which explode in a semicircle of even tinier stars. An effect here is good, but not one as over-the-top as that. When you're damaged you teleport slightly to the left for absolutely no reason at all.

The music is amazingly inappropriate, being sort of tinkly ballroom dance MIDIs from the TGF libraries, and the second level's one lasts all of ten seconds, so the thing has to keep pausing to reload the MIDI. It's playing over and over and over while I type this and I'm on the point of going mad.

Let's give the author some credit, though - it has working moving vertical platforms! I'm still working on that myself.

Almost irritatingly, this game does contain some good ideas such as the powerups that shrink you and so on, so it isn't a complete disaster, but it contains so many major Click mistakes... I for one just can't get over having to platform away to the same eight seconds of Brahms' Lullaby played over and over again. Aaargh!

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