Laser Squad

Copyright : Blade | Reviewed by : betpet

This game was written in 1988 by Julian Gollop and was released by Blade Software. You play the role of a squad commander where you are controlling a squad of rebel marines to complete a given mission. The game itself contains five missions, The Assassins, Moonbase Assault, Escape from the Mines, Cyber Hordes and Paradise Valley. If you play single player, you were given control of the marine squad where you have a limited budget to buy equipment for your soldiers and are given the choice of where to place them on the map within a given set of locations. Then you start the game and have a set number of action points for each soldier to move, shoot, equip or whatever you wish to do with them. The game is turn based and once you have used all the action points of each of the marines, you can end the turn and the computer controls the opposition during their turn.

You could save action points during the game for \'opportunity fire\' which means that the soldier is waiting for an enemy to come into sight and take a shot or two at them before they realise they\'ve been spotted.

The missions supplied are nice and varied and fairly open ended in that you had the freedom to complete the task any was you wish. The Assassins had your squad killing Sterner Regnix. Moonbase Assault had you destroying computers and/or killing all enemy marines on the base worth up to 100 points. Rescue from the Mines is fairly self explanatory but there are a few nice secrets in that map that could make your task easier. The objective being to escape without losing 3 squad members. I suspect they meant to have the object as not losing the three members being rescued but it doesn\'t seem to work that way. Cyber Hordes has you defending 5 power cores in your base from an invading force. Again, there are some nice secrets on the map if you look for them. You do have to balance out whether you\'d be wasting time looking instead of fortifying your defensive position. The objective being to protect the cores and killing 100 points worth of attacking forces. Finally, Paradise Valley has you transporting plans for a secret star fighter across a dangerous valley full of lethal creatures. There is a short cut if you can find it though.

The graphics are of the \'ported from the spectrum\' variety although I do think they were copied rather than ported. They\'re effective but in Paradise Valley, it can be very difficult to pick out the creatures. Then again, maybe that was the objective.

Sound effects are minimal. Explosions and laser shots mainly. No music to speak of.

The game itself seems potentially bland but when you get into the first map that first time, place your marines and start looking for Regnix, the atmosphere is thicker than London smog! You start empathising and rooting for favourite marines. You feel the desperation of having your squad decimated but having that one slim chance of achieving the objective with your last marine or two. Even on easy, Cyber Hordes is very difficult and heavily skewed toward the opposing force with their heavy droid able to blow things up with one shot. Saying that, beating the opposing force on the highest level gives you great satisfaction!

Each map has higher levels of difficulty which basically revolve around tighter financial constraints, stronger and more accurate enemies. This adds to the game and although a tactic seems to work on easy (1), there is no guarantee it will on any higher level.

To top it all off, you can also play a two-player mode where one of you is in charge of the rebels and the other can play the bad guys. I\'d have personally liked the opportunity to play the bad guys against the CPC too but I guess it was a bit much to ask considering how much great gaming was already in there.

Laser Squad has a newer incarnation by the author in Laser Squad Nemesis ( http://www.lasersquadnemesis.com ) which is quite enjoyable but I feel does lack that certain something you got from Laser Squad.