Gremlin
£7.99
Reviewer: Duncan MacDonald
You know those games with brilliant graphics and astounding gameplay that are just so utterly sponditious that herds of wildebeest couldn't drag you from your joystick? You do? Well, I'm afraid that Mask II isn't one of them (haw haw haw).
Game in nutshell time: First up, pick your team. You can choose three from a possible five members of the MASK organisation. Each member has his own vehicle and each vehicle its own worth over certain terrain. A sort of Transformers variant, you can opt for a car that doubles as a plane, a buggy that becomes a boat or you might even want the lorry that turns into a banana (are you quite sure about that?).
Anyway, having picked your troubleshooting MASK team, it's onto the missions, of which there are three. Hold on a minute, there's a message staring at me from the minitor. It says: "Press play on tape". Yaaaarrrghh........ It's a multi-load!! You'd better go and clean the budgie's cage or - something while it's loading. Turn te tum te diddly diddly dum (carries on in this vein for several minutes). Aah, it's in. Are you back? Right. I'll continue.
What we have here is a left/right scrolling shoot 'em up with interchangeable craft. Oh dear, I'm the lorry at the moment and I'm about to fall into some water. Quick, press the keyboard to change vehicles. Great. I'm in the car now, and now I can fly, so off I zoom to the right as the screen scrolls (a mite jerkily) towards me. Continuing in this fashion; switching between vehicles, avoiding land-mines, shooting anything that moves and picking up bonus fuel/stamina points by driving over the relevant icons, you can soon hope to complete the first mission (i.e. collecting a small digitized cartoon of Ronnie 'Raygun' and transporting it to the heliport - which you passed en route). It's easy - I did it on my fourth go. Missions two and three (once you've loaded them) are much, much harder, but frankly that is somewhat due to the sluggish and inconsistent directional control.
What with slightly garish screens, unengaging sprites and the wibbly scrolling, this "product tie-in sequel" will only really appeal to hardened Mask fans.
Now for a joke. Cripes, I can't think of one.
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