karl@sugar.UUCP (Karl Lehenbauer) (10/30/87)
(After reading the praise for Fire Power on the usenet, I bought the game, as did Peter. This review is based on my experiences with it.) Review of Fire Power, a game for the Amiga by Microillusions Fire Power is a shoot-'em-up game on the Amiga. You drive a tank and blast either the computer's fortress, the other guy's tank and fortress in a two-player split-screen mode or the other guy's fortress in a two- player mode using two Amigas connected via MODEM. The price is $25. I am not affiliated with Microillusions. The game has good graphics. In the single and split-screen modes, the screen pans vertically and horizontally as you drive around. If you stay in one place too long, enemy helicopters attack your tank. Enemy guns will shoot at you when you drive near them. When you blast an enemy building or gun, enemy soldiers usually run away from the wreckage. You get extra points for shooting them or running them over. Sometimes you'll blast a building and your own soldiers will come out. If you let them, they'll run and get into your tank. If you return them to the First Aid station, you get extra points. Some people may be offended by the squish sound and red splat that results from running over a soldier. I didn't mind. The playfield is much larger than what one can see on the screen. There is a radar screen, but again, this doesn't cover anywhere near the area that you can drive around. It is easy to not see or battle with your opponet for long periods of time. Also, the radar screen only shows your tank, your opponents tank, your garage, his garage, your home base and helicopters. I would like for it to also show enemy gun emplacements and maybe mines. ...which brings me to mines. Mines are so tough and you are on them so fast when driving that you are guaranteed to die before you can stop or turn. Maybe that is as it should be. I don't think so, particularly in single user mode where the computer (apparently randomly) seeds them all over and you only get five lives. I'd either like for the radar to show them (as mentioned above) or to ditch them entirely, at least in single user mode. The game will not run from the workbench. It does have a disk icon and if you click it open it has a run icon, but clicking the run icon causes a message to come up saying something like "You can't run this from the workbench. You have to control-Amiga-Amiga." So, I have to dump my RAM disk and setup. I can't take advantage of Facc (Perry - I bought it of course, might not have sent in the registration, though...) and reloads are slow. This is unacceptable. Peter and I both bought copies of the game, with the intent of playing by MODEM. The first time we tried it, we couldn't get it to work. After some very weird behaviour on the program's part we determined that it was looking for Carrier Detect on Peter's side and that his cable wasn't sending it through. The manifestation of this problem is that I can type to him in the conversation window but he can't type to me, we can't play, and if I hit the start gadget, I have to control-Amiga-Amiga to get out. For a company that has done other play-by-MODEM games (Chess, Checkers) this is a suprisingly crummy interface. We played solo then got together and played one-machine-two-player. The game is pretty much fun. There are some sucky aspects: It slows down. I mean it gets really slow...slower than choplifter when choplifter gets really busy. You can get stuck to where you can't move and just have to wait to die. At first this seemed worse than later, as we got better at figuring out how it is stuck and discovered that if you just lean on the joystick in a certain direction the tank will usually eventually move, but there are still times when I get hopelessly stuck. It shouldn't do that. There are some really deterministic aspects to the game. I was running low on fuel and the choppers were after me so I just stopped and started shooting. All the choppers drove into my missiles. As one died, another would come on and die in exactly the same way. I put a book on the fire button and left it. I just looked over after a couple of hours and my score is max'ed out at 9999. It Guru'ed on us once in about two hours of play. There is no way out of play-by-MODEM. After a game, you have to control- Amiga-Amiga to get out. Peter captured my flag and won. my side went into an "Error Detected" loop then said "aborting the game due to errors" - it didn't say Peter had won. In conclusion, the game is pretty fun to play. It would be a lot more fun if they'd spent more time improving the playability and fixing the aforementioned problems before releasing the game. -karl --
cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (10/31/87)
In article <947@sugar.UUCP> karl@sugar.UUCP (Karl Lehenbauer) writes: >Review of Fire Power, a game for the Amiga by Microillusions ... [deleted for brevity] ... > ... Sometimes >you'll blast a building and your own soldiers will come out. If you >let them, they'll run and get into your tank. If you return them to the >First Aid station, you get extra points... Actually, you can tell which buildings will have your own men in them because they will have bars over the windows. Pretty soon you can recognize them easily. And bringing men back to the first aid station gives you more than points! In the multiplayer mode it gives you a mine for every 5 men you rescue, and in single player mode it gives you a new life for every 10 men you rescue. > ... Also, the radar screen only shows >your tank, your opponents tank, your garage, his garage, your home >base and helicopters. I would like for it to also show enemy gun >emplacements and maybe mines. It also shows the location of the enemy flag (don't I wish I knew this when I was blasting trees looking for mine ...) >There is no way out of play-by-MODEM. After a game, you have to control- >Amiga-Amiga to get out. F1 will reset the game from modem-modem mode. >Peter captured my flag and won. my side went into an "Error Detected" loop >then said "aborting the game due to errors" - it didn't say Peter had won. Apparently it has real problems keeping synchronized with the game on the other end of the line. One person on BIX who was playing with two machines side by side noticed that both tanks were outside of the same garage but didn't appear on each others screens! >In conclusion, the game is pretty fun to play. It would be a lot more fun if >they'd spent more time improving the playability and fixing the >aforementioned problems before releasing the game. I agree, and I look forward to their other efforts in the One on One series. --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.