Label: Players Premier
Author: Knight/Beston/Severn
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon
The Taskforce is in fact "a state of the art jet fighter bristling with destructive firepower missiles, heat seekers, mines, orbitals and bouncing bombs", or so the blurb says. All I can say to add to that is it must be one hell of a jet plane..
It can fly in eight directions, hover and saying that it's a low level attack craft is like saying that the channel tunnel is going to be a bit damp on the outside. Taksforce, which let's face it is a pretty bad name for an aircraft, flies through caverns and down deep within the bowels of the planet, seeking out... the dreaded Snide Gartree!
Dan dan daaa! (Woman's voice) No, not the Snide Gantree. (Butch male voice) Yes, the Snide Gantree. That dastardly bunch of mercenaries led by none other than Graham Taylor. Shortly after losing his job on SU and moving off to become Editor of C+GT, he lost his mind under the pressure of working on the same floor as Ad Manager Garry Williams. His will snapped, and he now threatens to take over the world. He doesn't quite know how yet, but he says where there's a will, there's a way. (This is all lies, what's going on? - Alison.)
After a build up like that, naturally you'd expect a brilliant game to follow. Yet again, the Spectrum software industry lets you down. It's good, but it's far from brilliant. Viewed, and in fact played very similarly to Cybernoid 2, the screen flips in four directions, though unlike Cybernoid, the game is a maze, rather than a set pattern. That said, it's not a very difficult maze.
As in Cybernoid, you have a selection of weapons to choose from. These range from four way bouncing bombs, through delayed four-way bouncing bombs to shield, taking in a homing missile or two along the way.
Another thing the game has that isn't in Cybernoid is a sub-game. In TF, you have to find all the missile activate icons that when detonated, will blow up the island and take the Snide with it. You are presented with three pegs, one of which has a pile of three blocks. You have to move the pile, a block at a time onto one of the other two pegs. The only rule is you can't put a large peg onto a small peg and you have to take the top peg in any pile. Fun eh?
Taskforce is fun for a short while, but it isn't something I'd have to keep playing for hours before I could happily relinquish the joystick. It's good but no more.
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