victor@dean.Berkeley.EDU (Victor Brueggemann) (12/12/89)
I bought Omnitrend's Breach 2 and have been playing it over the weekend. I was rather disappointed to find that there was no course of action to get an upgrade from my Original Breach... I'll remember that when customer loyalty becomes a factor. Upon opening the box, one will notice an offer of a free scenario disk, for the price of $4.95. For about $50 dollars more, you can get a 1 year subscription to their magazine, Vidcom. This 'Magazine' has traditionally been an 8-12 page pamphlet with a couple of fiction columns, tips for the various games they purvey, along with product announcements and ordering information. All in all a rather sparse publication. And at $50/year, I think most folks can live without it. As for the game, Breach 2 is everything that you might have hoped for in the Original Breach... almost. There are many new types of terrain, new opponents, and new items. New Terrain Features are Slope, High Terrain, Forest, Shallow Water, and Shoreline. Shallow water can be moved through, as opposed to the old/deep water which cannot. There are occupation squares, part of many victory conditions, and Transporters (Take a wild guess what they do). The new Opponents are Wagdel (a spine shooting lizard), seeker (They can phase through walls), tanks (Yep. Armor.), and there are 2 types of robots now, 'Robots' and 'Bipeds' (The latter are like the small walkers in SWIII), and the overlords are gone. The new objects include weapons... your scouts can now carry a heavier rifle, as can your Psionics. There are also Remote Charges, Proximity Charges, Neutron Grenades, and Smoke Grenades. The latter obcure vision of everything on the map for the units inside, and moving out of the smoke is nearly impossible. I suspect it can be done, but I have yet to accomplish it. Speaking of smoke, a trail of it will be left behind the old familiar rockets, which may further obscure movement. Grav Belts have been replaced by grav shoes, which seem to function is a similar manner, except that they crash much more often. (As an aside, it states that they allow a marine to walk suspended 23cm above the ground. Not quite enough of a fall to kill someone in my opinion.) The game has a pleasant look to it, comparatively, but The folks at Omnitrend apparantly saw fit not to include quite as much mouse support as in the original. It is definitely aimed at a 'mouse optional' system. How this affects it's quality is rather a personal matter depending on how you like to use your Ami, but I don't like it. It makes the scenario builder a real pain in the rear to use, as it requires that you either memorize the key chart ore refer to it constantly. I hope that in Version 1.1 they put the mouse back in. There is not 1 single pull-down menu to be found, nor is there a way to switch palletes with the mouse. Overall, I like the game, but it obviously wasn't made to be used on the Amiga. My advice is that if you enjoyed the original, then buy this, but if you want to use the mouse, complain to the authors (Please!). ============================================================================== These are my opinions, and not those of my employers ... who don't know about Amigas and probably have never played games. Victor Brueggemann victor@dean.berkeley.edu CIS: 71211,3552 *Knave* ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "... E equals M C cubed ..." "Squared!" "What?" "E equals M C squared, not cubed!" "Not in the extra-temporal physics of the time vortex!!!" ==============================================================================