Comet Encounter

Copyright : Livewire Software | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

Ok, so we landed on the Moon (or did we?) and now the clever and often bored people of NASA think it might be a good idea to land on a speeding comet via the spare parts they have scattered about the office.

Sounds fair enough...here comes the review.

Graphics

Comet Encounter is certainly not the best looking game out there on the CPC but often it isn?t the graphcis that sold games back in the 1980s, more on that later. The game is limited to around 5 or 6 colours maximum and the only moving object is that pesky alien craft at the bottom of the screen.

Obviously the game moves at an alarming rate but this is a major downfall for a game of this nature, with only your thrust to keep you away from danger and plenty of object to hit as you fall it is hard to move your spacecraft before you hit something.

If I didn?t know better by now I would say the game looks like a ZX Spectrum port but because of the heat this generates I?ll refrain from saying it now....but it does.

Sound

Sound is very very basic indeed, the only sound you are going to hear during the five minutes of time you spend on the game will be the explosion you make when you tap one of those bulky objects. Great stuff.

Gameplay

As we mentioned earlier it is not the graphics that sold the game back in the 80s but how well the game played, sadly this game fails to meet either criteria and deserves to sit on the "never touch again" pile. Because of the speed the game moves at, how fast you are back on screen when you lose a life (without warning) and how awful the control system is you will be hard pressed to complete the first level without swearing 5 or 6 times.

Sadly this game could have been added to Cascades Top 50 collection we reviewed last year and you wouldn?t know the difference. One to avoid I?m affraid.