Unplayable, but looks good!,  Friday, 11 July 2008 This Shoot 'em up looks really nice. The graphics are colourful with a lot of variety throughout each level and a nice selection of different enemy waves attacking you. The sound effects and music is also good.

However the game has a huge flaw that renders it near impossible to play. The player's ship sprite is way too big and there is a noticeable joystick delay between moving the stick and the ship actually reacting. The problem with the ship being too big is quite bad because some parts of even level one are very narrow and this doesn't give you enough space to even move your ship out of the way of a single enemy! This coupled with the slow joystick response means you are often dead without being able to do much about it.

It is such a shame. If the ship sprite were smaller and the response faster this would be a very good shoot 'em up. However as it is you will quickly become frustrated by the level of difficulty these flaws create.

To be fair I've given the graphics and sound good scores because they are very nice. But I had to give a below average score for the gameplay due to the flaws, and this directly effects the lifespan of the game as you will quickly become frustrated and stop playing.

 The thinking man's cannon fodder!,  Friday, 04 July 2008 I first played Syndicate as a coverdisk demo containing the first couple of missions. As soon as it loaded and I started to play the first mission I was hooked and kept playing through those demo missions loads of times while I waited for the final game to be released.

Set in a futuristic cyberpunk world, with a lot of bladerunner and William Gibson influences, the isometric 3D graphics work very nicely to create the mission areas. And these areas are populated with lots of little game characters moving around, walking the streets, or going into and out of buildings, whilst cars travel around the streets. This all works well to create the atmosphere of a living and breathing city.

The game's world is controlled by large corporations, all competing for the domination of each country. The main goal of the game is global domination, with you in control of the secret agents from one of the these corporate organisations, going on secret missions in order to take over the world.

The mouse driven control system is so easy to use that you are left enjoying the game and not needing to worry about how to do something. A simplified version of this was later seen in games like Cannon Fodder, with you moving your little men with the left mouse button, and firing with the right. Such a simple control system and it works.

The secret agents you control are cyborgs that can be enhanced with upgraded limbs, brains, eyes, hearts etc. Each upgrade boosts their abilities to move, fight and react. In order to upgrade them you need to research each upgrade. This requires the spending of money which you earn from successfully completing each mission. You can also use money to buy better weapons and items.

The game is played out as a series of missions, with you able to equip and send up to 4 of your agents on each. Each successful mission gives control of one new area of the world map and unlocks adjoining regions for you to move into and take your next mission. Missions vary from straight forward go in a shoot all the enemy agents, to assassinations of a key person, or the persuasion of important people to bring them over to your side, so that they can work for you.

Before a mission begins you are taken to the mission briefing screen which gives details of the mission and the goals you need to complete. You can spend some extra money on this screen to unlock some extra information, hints and tips about the mission. Sometimes these extra bits of information are useful, but they are not essential to completion of the missions. You also get to kit out and set up up to 4 of your agents to take on each mission. You can configure their cybernetic body parts, and give them up to 8 weapons and item each to take with them. It is important to read the mission briefs properly before configuring your agents because you might need certain equipment like the persuadatron, or a long range weapon if the enemies are likely to be carrying mainly shotguns.

If there is one thing that does let the game down slightly, it is the fixed view of the game's world. If one of your agents walks behind or inside of a building you lose sight of them, although you can still see where they are by the number that floats above their head. This is OK until you suddenly see one of your agents is being shot, but when you switch to control them you can't see who is firing at them, so you have to randomly move you mouse cursor around the area until you get a red crosshair, and hope it is the guy shooting at you! But apart from that small issue the game is great and really enjoyable to play.

Syndicate is definitely up there with the best that the Amiga had to offer. It is a key game in the evolution of gaming and contributed much to the real-time strategy genre. If you haven't played it then it is highly recommended.

Sadly a sequel was attempted a few years later on PC and Playstation, but they didn't quite get it right. The graphics were improved, but the gameplay wasn't as good and it wasn't received too well by fans of the original. The good news though is that if you enjoy this original, there is a mission expansion disk available to extend the game and give it more life.

 Interesting twist on the thrust style game,  Wednesday, 02 July 2008 When I originally saw preview screenshots for this game I really wanted to get hold of it and looked forward to its release.

It is kind of an evolution of the thrust style games, where you control a ship that is affected by gravity constantly pulling you downwards, and a fuel supply that is being used up all of the time you are in the air, meaning you are constantly trying to reach the next refuelling platform in time, before you run out and crash. But unlike the original thrust games where your ship was like a version of the old asteroids ship, in Zzzep you are in control of an airship, or Zeppelin. This means that gravity has less immediate affect on your ship and you slowly float downwards if you don't put upwards.

The level design is also very thrust like, with you needing to navigate a series of cave like caverns and tunnels, shooting any obstacles that are in your way and avoiding enemy guns and other moving objects out to get you.

The game's graphics are also very nice; colourful and full of interesting little touches and things to see. The sound isn't so great. The intro theme tune which plays during the title screen is very nice and jolly, but the actual in game sound effects and audio is very minimal. Your ship makes a low drowning noise and the in game objects have sound effects such as the light barriers switching on and off, or guns firing, but the sound of your ship exploding is the main sound effect you will be hearing the most! The reason for this I will now explain...

So far the graphics are good and the idea of the game is good, so why haven't I given the game a much higher rating? It is just too damn hard! The collision detection is pixel perfect, making it near to impossible to get anywhere in the game, and the timing needed to negotiate obstacles is ridiculous!

For example, at the very beginning of the game you have to leave the landing pad, move to the right, shoot some obstacles blocking your route, and then you come to a light gate, with it flicking on and off. You have to time you movement through this gate to get past before it flicks back on. However the time the gate flicks off is exactly how long it takes to get through it, so you have to be moving through the gate exactly as it switches off to make it before it comes back on. Go through and it flicks on with just one pixel of your ship close to it and you explode and are returned to the start of the level. This is the very beginning of the very first level and it is so hard already just because of the unforgiving collision detection and pixel perfect accuracy required. It is mad!

When playing I did manage to get a bit further though the first level, but not without a lot of swearing and disbelief as to why the collision detection is quite this harsh. If it had been made just slightly more forgiving it would be a joy to play and great fun too. Sadly due purely to this one problem the game is rendered nearly impossible to play. For this reason I had to give it a very low lifespan and quite a low gameplay score.

This could have been so good if it were not for the really unforgiving collision detection. Don't bother playing it.

 Great concept, quickly gets boring,  Wednesday, 18 June 2008 The idea and design of this game is great. You control three groups of police special forces and can switch between them at will, moving each group within a mission to slowly bring them together at the final target location, which normally involves setting a bomb to blow up a base, and then getting back to your waiting helicopter.

The gameplay focuses around direct control of your police forces via joystick with an into the screen style shoot 'em up that is very cleverly creating using a psudo 3D effect made up from sprites scaling as you move forward, creating the illusion that you are moving through tunnels.

You also have a control console to the right of the main action which you can type commands into to issue certain orders such as requesting additional team members to join you, to switch groups, to fire missiles, or to set a bomb. This console is also used for when you log into terminals and then you can enter commands to open doors, deactivate guns and camera.. etc.

Initially the game is very nice to play. The pseudo 3D into the screen movement is smooth and well done as you move your team members through the tunnels. And the ability to switch between the three teams to move your forces further into a mission from different directions is something that was quite an original idea when this game came out. Since then we have seen many tactical style FPS games use this idea of multiple team switching, but in 1991 such 3D first person games didn't exist.

Sadly the game quickly becomes very repetitive. You move down a tunnel and enemy soldiers jump out or drop down from the ceiling. You shoot them all and move on. And this repeats. You come to a corner and move towards the direct you want to go, the graphics rotate 90 degrees, and then the whole process repeats again.

This is sometimes broken up by turning a corner and finding a larger enemy in your path such as a gun emplacement or tank. These just involve you shooting them with your guns and rockets until they explode. Or occasionally you will get an automated gun pop out of the wall and fire at you. The only other main obstacle are doors. You can either open these from terminals that you sometimes find around the areas, or shoot them a couple of times with rockets to blow them up.

It is sad because the ideas used in this game are great. The live action mixed with the command based console and the switching between three teams during a mission are all brilliant, but sadly the gameplay itself is just to repetitive and quickly gets boring. We have since seen how these ideas can be used well within a game if you look at some of the tactical shooters such as the Tom Clancy or Full Spectrum Warrior games, or even the later Amiga game Liberation. If they had designed this game using similar plot lines and ideas to those games then Narco Police would have been a great game. Equally the game engine and ideas of the team switching could have been used well for an RPG style game similar in idea to something like Dungeon Master of Hired Guns.

Therefore for the cool into the screen 3D style I had to give the game high marks for graphics, but for the repetitive gameplay the score had to be average and this means the lifespan is very short lived as you will get bored quickly.

That just leaves the sound. The game's intro has quite a nice tune, but once playing the game there is no music playing and the sound effects are mostly the same repetitive gun shot, with the occasional explosion. Therefore there isn't really much more than a few sound effects to make up the game's sound.

Is the game worth playing? It is just to take a look and have a quick play around. However I wouldn't recommend it as a game you are likely to ever want to complete.

 Interesting... for Floyd fans!,  Wednesday, 09 April 2008 This is an interesting Demo. Based on the Pink Floyd album, The Wall, this production interprets the album via sampled music and digitized artwork taken directly from the album, mixed with the group's own ideas and graphics. It uses a number of different graphic styles, with some working, but others looking a bit too basic.

The biggest criticism though is how long winded this whole production is. Some sections make you wait over a minute for them to load, and then only last a few seconds. And for a production that comes on 6 disks it doesn't seem to contain enough to warrant such a big release. I've seen demos with much more content spanning just 2 disks. They obviously used a lot of digitized graphics and sampled sound which quickly eat into their storage space.

It doesn't really use any special effects that stand out, although the number of fields used within some sections is nicely done.

It is worth watching at least once, especially if you are a fan of the album.