Game Over


by Luis Royo, Snatcho
Dinamic Software
1987
Crash Issue 44, Sep 1987   page(s) 106,107

Producer: Imagine
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Dinamic Software

Repulsed by the growing greed and powerlust of Queen Gremla, the warrior lord Arkos resolves to overthrow his monarch.

Arkos begins his destructive quest in the dank arcades of the planet Hypsis, running and jumping through the flick-screen underworld, aided by lifts that take him to higher floors or provide moving stepping stones to the next screen. But if Arkos falls from one of these elevated platforms, he loses a life. (He starts with three.)

Guardian robots ride the air firing at our hero, and laser-shooters aim at his body. Arkos has only limited energy to survive these assaults.

For protection the warrior carries a blaster with unlimited fire power, and a stock of more powerful grenades. Whenever Arkos destroys robots or monsters he gains points.

Eventually Arkos encounters red and white barrels, which he can destroy with three blasts. These then endow special powers upon him - energy hearts restore his flagging reserves, 'pow up' increases his fire power, and a force field offers protection from shots and collision. But be warned: some of the barrels conceal mines which kill at the slightest touch.

Once through the prison chambers, Arkos must cross a swamp where he finds regenerating green monsters occupying a platform world, and deadly rocket ships which streak across the skies. If our blasting warrior successfully negotiates this monstrous flock he comes face to face with the towering bulk of the Giant Orko, who can with a JUMP and a THUMP squidge the very existence from Arkos's frame.

So this overdeveloped creation must be ruptured by 40 shots - a grenade counts as four shots - before it goes to meet its maker.

Then only the three giant robots remain, and they can be taken out with 20 well-placed shots each.

But Arkos's adventure is far from over. Here Game Over moves to a second world, as Antos travels to the planet Sckunn to test his fighting skills in a forest land. (This second world loads separately, and can only be accessed with a code from the first half.)

Now Arkos has a giant laser, with increasable fire power, instead of grenades, This he can use against the enemy Kaikas and secure his passage to his ultimate goal, the Palace Of Greco la herself. There he is confronted with further robots, fireball-shooting Leisers-Freisers, more lasershooters and finally the Giant Guardian. This personification of evil must be destroyed section by section with 60 carefully-aimed shots before it gives up its mechanical life. Only then has Arkos completed his quest.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: reasonable, though there's terrible colour clash
Sound: spot FX
Options: definable keys; two separately-loading sections


The only decent part of Game Over is the loading screen, showing a skimpily-dressed girl.... Elsewhere the graphics are badly-defined but the backgrounds are good. Colour is used too much, so the screens are always full of clash. And there's no tune, just firing FX. But the big, irritating letdown is that once you've been killed, even on Level Two or Three, you go back to Level One again! Dinamic seems to have concentrated on design more than the quality of gameplay here, and it wasn't a very successful move.
NICK [63%]


Pick up your laser rifle, find a hostile alien planet, land your ship where the natives can find you, and go and hack, pillage, maim and generally make life miserable for the poor little things. Graphically Game Over is pretty good: the sprites are clear and quite well defined, though the terrible colour clash is another matter. Sonically the game consists of a few unimaginative blasting lees. Overall, a barely average shoot-'em-up.
MARK [45%]


The look of Game Over is very much in the Dinamic (Army Moves) programming style, ie dodgy collision-detection, attribute problems, detailed graphics and double loading. All these things add up to a very poor imitation of Green Beret, also from Imagine.
PAUL [56%]

Presentation: 73%
Graphics: 57%
Playability: 46%
Addictive Qualities: 54%
Overall: 55%

Summary: General Rating: A disappointing blasting game - the packaging is misleadingly interesting.

Transcript by Chris Bourne

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