99 lines
5.7 KiB
Plaintext
99 lines
5.7 KiB
Plaintext
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KNIGHT FORCE
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KNIGHT FORCE is a strategy/arcade game from Titus Corporation. It offers
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excellent graphics, fine animation, crummy gameplay, graphic glitches, a no-save
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save option, joystick or keyboard control, and copy protection.
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A while back, Titus distributed a couple of games that showed promise. One of
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these was GALACTIC CONQUEROR, an ego-boosting arcade game that you could lose
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only by turning off your machine; the other was TITAN, one of the more
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interesting, if physically exhausting, variations of BREAKOUT. Other Titus
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games, such as F-40 PURSUIT SIMULATOR and FIRE AND FORGET, looked okay, but
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either played poorly or suffered from coding glitches and screen foul-ups. A
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glossy ad for KNIGHT FORCE intrigued me so much that I actually couldn't wait to
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review the game. Alas! It turns out that I was duped by Madison Avenue (not the
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first time and surely not the last): KNIGHT FORCE appears to be worth several
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thousand dollars, but plays as if it's worth only ten cents.
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The KNIGHT FORCE plot concerns Belloth, the Kingdom at the crossroads of time
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and space; Red-Sabbath, an evil sorceror who has kidnapped Princess Tanya; and
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the Knight of Thunder, the warrior-guardian who holds the key to the time-space
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gates. The goal of the game is to enter the five time zones, capture the
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power-enhancing magic amulets, destroy the clones of Red-Sabbath, destroy the
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real Red-Sabbath, and rescue Princess Tanya. The Princess suffers from
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claustrophobia which, thanks to her incarceration in the clammy and compact
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dungeons, could plunge her into the abyss of madness at any moment. As
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terrifying as this sounds, it's not something you need worry about.
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The five time zones take you to: a prehistoric era; Versailles; today in New
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York; somewhere and sometime in the future; and a timeless mystical land. Each
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zone includes indigenous creatures: Cro-Magnons, hangmen, punk gang leaders,
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robots, and dwarves with really large and nasty choppers.
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The main ST graphics screen consists of a "dashboard," and five rock structures
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(called dolmens) that represent the time zones. The dashboard displays a timer
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and pendulum, a score indicator, knight and enemy power bars, a time zone
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indicator, and any magic amulets you've collected. Total mission time is 20
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minutes. The game ends when your power bar runs down, which happens far more
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frequently than the expiration of the timer.
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Once you've selected a dolmen, you'll be sent to the appropriate zone. The
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graphic displays for each are wonderfully portrayed: colorful and brightly-lit,
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or grim and dank, but always atmospheric. The screen scrolls left and right,
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depending on which way you're headed; at least one zone has a lower level. The
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many creatures attack immediately: There are lethal birds, bouncing springs, the
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Red-Sabbath clones, street urchins, skeletons, air bubbles, and even disembodied
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hands that rise up from beneath the ground to assault you.
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You must make your way through each landscape, do battle with the creatures
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until you find an amulet, and reach the dungeon in Red-Sabbath's Castle of Doom,
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where Princess Tanya is chained to the wall. At this point, Tanya will be
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transported by sorcery to another zone, while you hang around and fight a
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Red-Sabbath clone.
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You guide your onscreen knight with the joystick: The stick moves him left and
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right -- moving him in a crouch effects a neat imitation of Chuck Berry's
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"duckwalk" -- and jumps him in three directions. With the button pressed, you'll
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have eight different sword attacks. The keyboard is an alternative, with the
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numeric keypad replacing stick actions and the spacebar replacing the joystick
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button.
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The KNIGHT FORCE package comes with two copy-protected disks, and an
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instruction manual that advances the Titus tradition of illiteracy: The
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individual words can be understood, but when you try to put them into
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comprehensible sentences -- which you must do because Titus did not -- the final
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result makes only marginal sense. The importance of the amulets is explained
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most unclearly, and there's some gibberish about magic birds.
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The problems with KNIGHT FORCE begin soon after booting. When you select a time
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zone, the dashboard sometimes disappears, which is not good because the current
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state of your power bar becomes a mystery. Entering certain areas destroys the
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bottom half of the screen, after which both game and machine freeze. Function
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key F6 brings up the save-game option; although saving a position seemed
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successful, reloading did not work once. Occasionally, one hit from a bird ended
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the game, while in the Castle of Doom, I regularly managed to withstand a
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zillion fireballs from Red-Sabbath.
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Swordplay is pathetic and not fun. The sword hits creatures when it shouldn't,
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and misses them when they should have been hit. Other goofy things happen:
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Crouch (in order to fight a low-flying bird or one of those toothy dwarves) but
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don't swing your sword, and you'll get hit; crouch for the same reason but swing
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the sword, and the bird flies past unharmed (or the dwarf chews out your heart).
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None of this has anything to do with the timing of the sword swing: While even
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the worst stick-twiddler gets lucky every now and then, in this game, luck is
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not an option.
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KNIGHT FORCE looks terrific: When the program is functioning correctly, there's
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lots of great artwork and slick animation to see; sad to report, correct
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functioning is a finite condition. Either the game was not playtested before it
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was released -- which is not cool, or it was playtested by telephone and
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released anyway -- which is deplorable. Avoid KNIGHT FORCE unless you have lots
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of money to waste.
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KNIGHT FORCE is published and distributed by Titus.
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*****DOWLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253
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