Sorcery Plus

Copyright : Virgin Games | Reviewed by : betpet

An evil necromancer has captured your eight companions and you are all that stands in the way of his total domination of the world. You must free your comrades and return them to their rightful place. Then, take your place with them and open the doorway to the world of the necromancer and destroy him once and for all!

Certain everyday objects are used to free each of the eight sorcerers and part of the puzzle is to work out which one frees which sorcerer. Monsters of all kinds have been released by the necromancer to stop you in your quest but magic cauldrons can save your skin as they can regenerate your health. Just be careful, the necromancer has managed to booby-trap a few and they will make you worse, not better.

The graphics for this game are wonderful. Brightly coloured and very detailed. The sprites are also animated (as is the deadly water and life-saving cauldrons) adding life to an already lively game.

The music and sound effects are limited to a menu-screen tune which is quite jolly and appropriate to the game. Sound effects relate to their actions well.

The game itself is great. You have to skilfully kill and/or avoid the bad guys with your joystick (yep, no keys on this one) picking up an object and using it on doors, enemies or just moving them closer to where you plan to use it later. There are a couple of places where I feel that you need to have reactions a little too good to get through but it doesn\'t detract from the game. Having only one life makes you a lot more cautious and it is incredibly frustrating to get very far only to lose your life and have to start again.

The extended section (the plus part) has completely new sprites, objects and scenery but they\'re an obvious re-use of the original bad guys, just with new skins. This does allow you to cheat a little as bringing an object from your world to the necromancer\'s world shows you which items are being re-used as what and if you work out how to kill the necromancer, you can work out which object it relates to in your world and thus skip a puzzle you need to solve in the necromancer\'s world to get the object. (You actually need three of this object to kill the necromancer but there are only two and you have to solve a puzzle to create the third.) Some nice touches exist where they refer to Virgin and Roland on their relevant screens.

The game itself is soundly written with good collision detection and puzzles. A nice touch is that you can enter a developer\'s name into the high score table and saves a comment in its place (I found this out via Amstrad Action as a letter was sent in regarding a lady called Elaine who found the whenever she added her name, it came up with something like \'Top Coder\' on the high score table.) It also saves the high score permanently onto the disc (so no insulting family members instead of putting down your name!) leaving a permanent record of your skill. Some doors (and a corridor in particular) near water can be a little clumsy and have you dying in a momentary lapse of concentration much to the player\'s annoyance.

This was the first game I completed without cheating by looking up any hints or using pokes. The original was good, the extras just finish it off perfectly! The \'Gang of Five\' did a great job here and I feel it deserves all the plaudits it got.