glassner@unc.cs.unc.edu (Andrew S. Glassner) (01/30/88)
Today I received my copy of the new game Crystal Quest. I give it 5 out of 5. The game is an interactive, 2d arcade-style hand-and-eye reaction time shoot-em-up. You're piloting a ship across the face of the Mac screen, controlling its movement (direction, speed) with the mouse. Clicking the mouse button fires a torpedo; pressing the space bar fires a smart bomb (if you have one). You begin in the center of the screen, surrounded by an assortment of static objects: crystals to get, mines to avoid, and bonus point flags to get (there might even be a smart bomb or two in view if you're lucky). You begin to cruise around the screen to get the points and crystals. When you have all of the crystals collected, a hatchway opens at the bottom of the screen. You fly into the hatch to collect bonus points for time and then advance to the next level. At certain scores you are awarded an extra ship. Of course, there have to be bad guys. And there are plenty of them. There are two portals: one each on the left and right side of the screen. The baddies come out of these portals and onto the screen. Then they begin to wreak havoc. There are 12 different kinds of bad guys, each with a unique image and personality. Some are not as nasty as others; you start seeing meaner bad guys as you advance levels. If any bad guy touches you, you die. The baddies on the first few levels aren't too hard to outrun, and they're not continuously aggressive. As you progress, they get more determined to come after you. Some also have the ability to fire shots of their own, of different types: you must also avoid their shots or lose a ship. There are a few things that make this game really special. First is the quality of the play and the interaction. The game is principally entertaining: the bad guys have personality, your goals are clearly defined, and your options are limited. It's not a game you have to slowly decipher: it's plain, simple, up-front brute reaction time and observation. But wonderfully done. The mouse controls not the position of your ship but its velocity. Swish the mouse quickly to the right, and your ship starts zipping to the right. Swish left to bring the ship to a halt. The mechanics of this control are really fine; there seems to be a very non-linear correlation between mouse speed and ship speed, but I only say this because I've thought about it: it feels completely natural. The graphics are very simple but well done. Everything on the screen is a simple, small, shape that is easily recognizable and differentiable from everything else. The game comes with over 300k of digitized sound support. Every time you shoot, or collect a crystal, or get a point flag, or bump into a mine, or... well, every action in the game (by you or the bad guys) has its own entertaining (and usually appropriate) sound. There are some nice surprises in the sound I don't want to give away. But they're very well done and completely integrated into the game. Another special feature of the game is your control. When the screen begins to fill up with baddies and their shots at you, the Mac has simply got to do more work than for a mostly empty screen. The bad guys begin to slow down a bit; so do their shots. BUT, and this is most important, your ship responds as always. So the other guys get sluggish, but the skills you build up by playing the game are not jarred when it gets busy: your ship always responds the same way. This probably wasn't easy, but it was obviously a deliberate design decision. It was quite right. Players of Crystal Raider (shareware, a year or so old) will easily learn this game; it's an enhanced version. Some of your favorite bad guys from Crystal Raider make a re-appearance in Crystal Quest, in the company of several new nasties. I've probably played about 2 hours total (which is a lot for a fast-paced arcade game). I've made it to level 29, with a score of 1540350. The box says that there are 40 different levels. I don't know what comes after 40, but it will probably be a long time before I see it. The upper twenties are HARD. Luckily, you can gain back about one life per level if you're quick (from the bonus points at the end), but you start losing ships a lot faster than that in the upper levels! I ordered from MacWarehouse, which is selling the game for $28 (I couldn't find anyone else selling it in February's MacUser). It's marketed by Greene, Inc. of Monterey, CA. The documentation needed to play the game is on-line: brief but complete. The box contains 1 800k disk containing Crystal Quest, the sound file, a system folder, and a "demo" version of the game you can give to your friends. It contains some of the bad guys and ends after 5 levels. I love this game. The difficulty is well graded, there is tons of sound and graphics, and the interaction is handled in a superb manner. The game is exciting, and I really enjoy driving my ship throughout the screen, avoiding static land mines, moving bad guys, and the bad stuff they emit (new mines, torpedoes, fancy bombs, etc.). I give it a Perfect score: 5/5. - -- ---- ------- ------------ -------------------- --------------------- Andrew Glassner UUCP:decvax!mcnc!unc!glassner ARPA:glassner@cs.unc.edu
glassner@unc.cs.unc.edu (Andrew S. Glassner) (01/31/88)
Gee, folks on this group are quick to respond! Okay, two additional
points to the reivew of Crystal Quest I posted earlier:
1) The game is copy-protected. If you copy the disk using the Finder,
when you start the game up it asks you to insert your master disk.
2) When I said that I couldn't find anyone but MacWarehouse selling
the game, this was in no way a negative statement about that firm.
In fact their service was friendly and excellent. I would have
preferred to have given a list of sources for the game so folks
could compare prices, etc. I meant only to say that for this game,
from the February MacUser ads, MacWarehouse is the only source.
-Andrew
- -- ---- ------- ------------ -------------------- ---------------------
Andrew Glassner UUCP:decvax!mcnc!unc!glassner ARPA:glassner@cs.unc.edufireplace@cup.portal.com (02/01/88)
In a previous article, glassner@unc.cs.unc.edu (Andrew S. Glassner) writes about Crystal Quest, the great sequel to Crystal Raider. I purchased this fine game last week for $24.95 - a great deal. I would like to clarify that this game is not technically copy protected. I did a simple image (full sector) copy of the original and the copy works fine. The desktop does not do an image copy when doing a full disk copy. I think this form of protection was to prevent people from pirating the game via modem (who would want that?). I personally like this key protection. Support Greene, Inc. and Patrick Buckland... run out and purchase this puppy. I think this is going to be painful... fireplace@cup.portal.com I don't know who Ron S. Vanco is... sun!portal!cup.portal.com!fireplace ~~TERMINAL DOES NOT SUPPORT COLOR HOLOGRAPHIC IMAGES - GRAPHICS SKIPPED~~
fireplace@cup.portal.com (02/02/88)
By the way... Crystal Quest can be installed on a Hard Disk. The game will ask
you to insert the original key disk in your Floppy Drive before starting. It's
nice being able to put a game on a Hard Disk.
This is really getting quite painful... fireplace@cup.portal.com
sun!portal!cup.portal.com!fireplace
~~TERMINAL DOES NOT SUPPORT COLOR HOLOGRAPHIC IMAGES - GRAPHICS SKIPPED~~chow@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Christopher Chow) (02/03/88)
Recently, fireplace@cup.portal.com wrote: |I purchased this fine game last week for $24.95 - a great deal. I would like |to clarify that this game is not technically copy protected. I did a simple |image (full sector) copy of the original and the copy works fine. The desktop |does not do an image copy when doing a full disk copy. I think this form of |protection was to prevent people from pirating the game via modem (who would |want that?). I personally like this key protection. Just because you do can copy a disk by doing a sector copy instead of bit copy dosen't mean that the game isn't copy protected! The mere fact that you had to resort to using a copy program's sector copy mode instead of using the Finder means that the software IS copy protected. |By the way... Crystal Quest can be installed on a Hard Disk. The game will |ask you to insert the original key disk in your Floppy Drive before |starting. It's nice being able to put a game on a Hard Disk. Well, it is kind of them to allow you to place your software on your hard disk :-) Seriously, though, I bought mine because I wanted the speed of a HD over a floopy and the convience of not having to locate and mount volumes to run programs. With any key disk copy protection both advantages are annihilated. Think again before praising any key disk schemes, especially on HD installed copies. Christopher Chow /---------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | Internet: chow@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (128.84.248.35 or 128.84.253.35) | | Usenet: ...{uw-beaver|ihnp4|decvax|vax135}!cornell!batcomputer!chow | | Bitnet: chow@crnlthry.bitnet | | Phone: 1-607-253-6699 Address: 7122 N. Campus 7, Ithaca, NY 14853 | | Delphi: chow2 PAN: chow | \---------------------------------------------------------------------------/
robertj@yale-zoo-suned..arpa (Rob Jellinghaus) (02/03/88)
In article <3562@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> chow@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Christopher Chow) writes: >Recently, fireplace@cup.portal.com wrote: ... >|By the way... Crystal Quest can be installed on a Hard Disk. The game will >|ask you to insert the original key disk in your Floppy Drive before >|starting. It's nice being able to put a game on a Hard Disk. > >Well, it is kind of them to allow you to place your software on your hard >disk :-) Seriously, though, I bought mine because I wanted the speed of a HD >over a floopy and the convience of not having to locate and mount volumes to >run programs. With any key disk copy protection both advantages are >annihilated. Think again before praising any key disk schemes, especially >on HD installed copies. Well, I don't LOVE the key disk scheme, but I do think it's permissible on a game of this nature (especially since I always run under Multifinder, and to play the game requires restarting the computer, which takes long enough that I have tome to find the disk). The game is AWESOME in color. If you have a II and like games, GET IT. >Christopher Chow >/---------------------------------------------------------------------------\ >| Internet: chow@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (128.84.248.35 or 128.84.253.35) | >| Usenet: ...{uw-beaver|ihnp4|decvax|vax135}!cornell!batcomputer!chow | >| Bitnet: chow@crnlthry.bitnet | >| Phone: 1-607-253-6699 Address: 7122 N. Campus 7, Ithaca, NY 14853 | >| Delphi: chow2 PAN: chow | >\---------------------------------------------------------------------------/ Rob Jellinghaus | "This is not a RENTAL car... jellinghaus@yale.edu.UUCP | this is PRIVATELY owned!!" ROBERTJ@{yalecs,yalevm}.BITNET | !..!ihnp4!hsi!yale!jellinghaus | -- _True Stories_