2005 Entries

Manic Muslim – Official Osama Bin Laden Simulator

Chaosmongers

Starglider’s Review:

It’s basically Manic Miner (obviously!), but you’re a muslim, collecting bombs(?).
The thing is, it’s really a very well done game! No sound mind you, but smooth motion
and animation, great loading screen, and varied challenges per screen.For this, it scores a very low 2/10

Dunny’s Review:

This one is an absolute gem. Unfortunately, it’s far too well crafted and thought out to be anywhere near the winner… but we all know what happens when the game’s actually any good, don’t we, Woody? You’re Osama Bin-Laden, and after a hard day’s work terrorising the capitalist merkins, it’s time for bed. You must head home via a series of Manic Miner style screens collecting items to unlock each exit. The sprites are smooth, the graphics quite well done, and the puzzles easy. It wouldn’t be amiss on the shelves of WHSmiths, having been created in Platform Game Designer which does this sort of thing quite well.

A good game, which defeats the object. A crap score of 4/10 – it’s not great, too easy by far, but too technically good to win.

Al Toro!

na_th_an

Starglider’s Review:

Since I am reviewing all the games in alphabetical order, this was the first game under fire, and straight away points were lost for fancy bold text, choice of keyboard or joystick and FANCY GRAPHICS!!! Has the art of crap programming tricks, poorly executed UDG art and lack of programming talents been lost? Things look up when you play the game. I have always been a sinclair joystick keyboard fanboy, so seeing the ability to use 67890 for my controls were a good start. But then select one of the options and press fire? Repeated pressing of the number “0” resulted in nothing, and only after pressing space resulted in playing. Nice!

But again, nice background graphics? Actual fairly fast gameplay? Points lost there too. I actually could score respectably once I knew what to do.

All in all, I’d have to give this a crap score of 4/10.

Dunny’s Review:

I liked this one, on a purely crap level. The graphics have had a lot of time spent on them – the bull actually looks like one, the poor bloke you’re going to have gored to death looks like a … well, a bloke who’s gonna get gored, and there’s nice textures for the sky and arena. Poor sound, like it’s been added as an after thought. As was the gameplay. It’s dire. You can see what the author wanted to achieve (Aside from having a dig at bullfighting – I don’t see the problem personally, if people want to die by bull horns, you should let them. Oh, is that not the point?) but the game itself is very poorly executed. Unlike your main character. Obviously the author is quite talented, at least in the ideas department. However, his execution stinks. Plus there’s got to be some machine code in there. Anyway, this one is a good example of a crap game – nice idea, nice presentation, absolutely no game. 7/10!

Spot the Dot 2

[inlay]
Andrew “spike1” Halliwell

Starglider’s Review:

Find the dot that’s hidden on screen. If you fail, it will “Mind Blast” you. And you have sensors! The dot apparently moves too!I got it first time! This is not Spot The Dot I remember. You remember, the impossible to complete one! Again, the STOP statement is used to end the game here. And it is quite a tedious game, so a point added there too.

I’ll give this a nice 6/10

Dunny’s Review:

This is vaguely reminiscent of a game I once saw reviewed in Crash. Trans-Am, I think it was. The main playfield looks very much like that, with lots of dots in it. And that’s the point – you have to find, amongst a shedload of red pixel-dots, one single red pixel-dot. The dot isn’t totally anonymous, as it moves under the cover of darkness (the screen goes black) and by carefully monitoring all the dots on the screen you can quite easily spot it. You have at your disposal three sensor sweeps, which will ring the dot making it even more obvious. Move your black search-o-dot over the offending miscreant, and victory is yours. Only once, mind, as the game will literally STOP and drop back to BASIC when you do. Or when you die, it’s pretty much the same thing.I found this vaguely entertaining. It’s not too hard, and quite well presented. The fades to black are smoothly executed (Assuming your emulatior doesn’t do screen update timings too accurately) and it does exactly what it says on the tin. I’ll give this one 5/10 – a good effort, nicely done, but not crap enough. It’s ineptitude we need here.