111 lines
6.2 KiB
Plaintext
111 lines
6.2 KiB
Plaintext
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HOVERFORCE
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HOVERFORCE by Accolade is a fast-paced action game, set in a near
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future, where mutant crimelords known as Alterants control the streets
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of MetaCity. The Alterants traffic in Aftershock, a mind-altering drug
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delivered by couriers accompanied by heavily-armed escorts. (This review
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is based on the IBM version.)
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As a genetically-engineered law officer, you must destroy the drug
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traffickers and stop the spread of the Aftershock drug, using an
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advanced hovercraft as your weapon.
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The game play is similar to other fast arcade or action games. You
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have a cockpit-level view from your hovercraft. You drive around
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blasting the Alterant's drug runners and bodyguards, picking up the
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colored objects they leave behind which give you scoring points or
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the means to upgrade your vehicle.
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MetaCity is a green plain with groups of large colored blocks
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representing buildings. Scattered street lights, shrubs, and lakes form
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additional obstacles to movement. The network of lakes adds an interesting
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challenge...you can cross them if you're quick, but spend more than
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a few seconds over water and your hovercraft will sink. The city is
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divided into four Quadrants and each one has a specific Alterant you
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must destroy. The Alterant's digitized photo is shown in the mission
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introduction screen. Your Enemy Disposition Display in the cockpit will
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show a short digitized photo sequence of the Alterant reacting with
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pleasure to hits on your ship, or going "oof" when you destroy one of
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his agents. These digitized sequences are brief but fun.
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Your main target for each mission is the Runner - a "Flash Gordon"
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styled red hovercraft which moves from one part of the city to another,
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making drug deliveries. While chasing the runner's hovercraft through
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the city you'll have to fend off or destroy his bodyguards and henchmen,
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shown as armed robots and saucer-shaped vehicles.
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The sky turns dark at the beginning of each drug run, and you then
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have a limited amount of time to find the Runner and blast him before
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he reaches his next drop point. Each mission consists of a time
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frame that includes several drug runs. At the end of that time,
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if you haven't destroyed the Runner, you have failed and must repeat
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the mission. If you destroy the Runner, you progress to the next
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mission. It takes three missions in each quadrant to destroy a given
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Alterant, so the game has a total of 12 levels. The difficulty increases
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as you move through the levels, with more dangerous henchmen and
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Alterants to deal with in the higher levels.
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Although the game runs in 256 color VGA, it uses a limited number
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of colors for most objects, giving it an "EGA-ish" look. The buildings
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are large rectangular blocks with no detail, but that does keep the frame
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rate high. Even stepping my machine down to 8Mhz the frame rate was very
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smooth. I was disappointed in the graphics used for the bodyguard objects.
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A majority are just simple flying saucer or robot shapes. They move
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around laterally and fire at you, but there's no additional animation.
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Sound is not a strong point in the game. With an Adlib or Soundblaster
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card you can choose either constant music or sound effects. The sound
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effects don't measure up to those of most other current games for
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the IBM. Bursts of white noise are used for weapons, and most sound
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effects had a excessive amount of hiss.
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The game play is hampered by the hovercraft movement. It can only
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spin on its vertical axis and move forward. It can't back up or move
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sideways, which makes movement around obstacles a chore. I had trouble
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getting a good feel for controlling the hovercraft with a joystick -
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it seemed oversensitive. I had better results using mouse or keyboard
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control. Stepping my 386/33Mhz machine down to 8Mhz improved the joystick
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control some, but I still had trouble overshooting the turns. Except for
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the joystick control problem, the game played fine at 33Mhz.
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You aim your selected weapon by rotating your craft from side to
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side. There is no elevation of the gun or missile systems so aiming
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is very easy. Available weapons are a machine gun for close range, a
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cannon for medium range, and missiles for long range. The game starts
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you out with just the machine gun. You must pick up cash dropped by
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Alterant henchmen in order to upgrade your weapons, buy more ammunition,
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or improve your hovercraft with better shields and engine capacity.
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Weapon Shop buildings are indicated on the cockpit map screen. An
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indicator arrow in the cockpit will also help you find the nearest shop.
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Trying to upgrade your vehicle is the most frustrating part of the
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game. Once you enter, you get a series of selection screens, but
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there isn't enough information on what's being offered for sale.
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On some screens cryptic objects are shown and there's just no way
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to know what they are or how they would improve your hovercraft.
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The manual is no help, it just tells you how to find Weapon Shops
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and has no list of upgrade options. Trial and error - actually buying
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something and trying it out - will eventually tell you what's what,
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but this information should have been in the manual or a help screen.
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As an action game, HOVERFORCE succeeds fairly well. The pace is very
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fast, and racing through the maze of buildings in pursuit of the
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Runner does get your adrenaline pumping. Compared to the rest of the
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game market it's only an average quality production. You can't help being
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influenced by other games you've seen, and after seeing Stellar 7
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(another futuristic tank action game) I was disappointed in the overall
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game play and graphics in HOVERFORCE.
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HOVERFORCE is distributed on 5-1/4" 360K disks (3-1/2" available),
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and copy protection uses a combination of code wheel and keyword from
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the manual. Graphics support is for CGA, EGA, Tandy 16-color, and
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VGA/MCGA. HOVERFORCE requires 570K free memory, which is rather a lot.
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A section of the manual does a very good job of explaining how to modify
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your autoexec.bat and config.sys in order to get enough free memory to
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run the game. I found one major bug: Pausing the game would often cause
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a lockup, requiring a reboot.
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HOVERFORCE is published and distributed by Accolade.
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