[net.micro.cbm] Review: Zeppelin

doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee) (02/12/85)

Game review:
Zeppelin (Synapse) C-64 disk  list:$35  discount:$20
    One player -- one joystick required
    Two players (pilot & gunner) -- two joysticks required

Overall grade: B-

You are flying in a dirigible, floating in the breezes wafting
through the tunnels of a below-ground civilization.  Your job:
destroy everything in sight without crashing.

As I've already noted, I'm not much on "destroy everything in sight"
games.  As a result, Zeppelin is not one of my favorites.  But I
think that it would be well received by afficionados of such games.

You don't have a lot of control over the dirigible.  You can move
toward the left or right of the screen, or toward the top or the
bottom, but in general you have to go whichever way the winds go.
When you come to a "fork" in the tunnels, you can manoeuver toward
the direction you want to go in order to catch the desired wind.
The background scrolls past you as you travel through the tunnels.

Nothing shoots at you.  You only need to keep from running into things.
Things like laser barriers, balloons, and other dirigibles, f'rinstance.
If you can't get around them, you'll have to shoot them (which is good
for the ol' point score anyway).  The dirigible fires in the direction
that the winds are blowing, plus one other controlled by the joystick
(gunner's joystick in the 2-player version).

A common technique in "destroy everything" games is continuously and
indiscriminatingly firing.  In order to discourage that, Zeppelin has
an interesting feature:  there are switches placed throughout the
tunnels which turn on/off various hazards.  These toggle every time
they're hit.  One of the most devastating hazards is the "earthquake",
which causes the walls to shake (reducing your clearance) and sending
pieces of rock falling from the ceiling.  Since you're riding the
winds, you can't always back up to take another shot at a switch that
you inadvertently switched on.

Herewith a special gripe.  Maybe I missed it in the documentation,
but I don't understand the goal.  It would appear that the goal is the
usual "rack up as many points as possible before you die" -- except
that you can rack up all the points you like on the first level with
virtually no risk.  Everything that you shoot up is restored when you
next return to that spot.  And you aren't forced to go on to the next
level.

The graphics are good.  Nothing to go ga-ga over, but good.  I would
recommend a monitor rather than a TV, though.  Or be prepared to
spend a little time getting the TV set up to give a nice picture.
It's hard to tell the position of the switches (up = hazard on),
and to distinguish between "LIFE" and "TNT" boxes.

The sound effects are also nothing special, but a shoot-em-up doesn't
call for much.  There are short musical effects when a switch is
hit, but I still can't tell the "off" music from the "on".

In Synapse's tradition, the documentation is sparse, being the Atari
800 documentation with an extra sheet thrown in to explain loading
procedures on the C-64.  On the other hand, what kind of instructions
does a shoot-em-up require?

As usual for Synapse's disks, the front side of the disk wouldn't load
for me, but the back side did.  
-- 
Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug