Personal Computer News


Frenzy

Author: Mike Gerrard
Publisher: Micro Power
Machine: Commodore 64

 
Published in Personal Computer News #092

FRENZY

If you've always wanted to leap on a Lepton then this could be just the game you've been looking for, though don't be misled by the frantic title as it's a slightly more sedate game than Frenzy might suggest.

Leptons are deadly sub-atomic particles that have escaped from a high security research lab. There they are, bouncing around in the middle of your screen... or at least one of them is.

The game is a kind of cross between Snake and Breakout, where the little line that is a Lepton hits the walls of the screen and bounces back at the appropriate angle.

Frenzy

You control a robot craft that can glide around the sides of the screen and then, when you press the fire button, travels around inside the screen. It leaves a trace behind it, and if the Lepton hits the trace you lose one of your three lives.

If you reach another edge, or simply move round to meet up with your own trail, the enclosed area is painted in. By this means you can gradually edge in on the bouncing Lepton and hope to trap it in one part of the screen.

You kill a Lepton by closing it in like this, or simply by filling in 95% of the total screen area. Once you start filling the screen in, however, it gradually becomes more and more difficult to predict which way the Lepton is going to bounce, and the likelihood of a collision increases.

Frenzy

There is a joystick option as well as keyboard control. Your craft has two speeds at which it can move, slow or fast, and you switch between the two by pressing the fire button or space bar when stationary.

The game becomes more complicated as you progress up through the different levels (you have to start on Level One each time) because higher levels introduce the problem of Chasers, which move around the edges and along the trails that you create... I imagine you can guess what happens if you meet up with one of the Chasers.

On later levels there are also more Leptons, up to a maximum of five Chasers and give Leptons, though as far as I was concerned this remained a theoretical maximum.

Frenzy

The game becomes quite absorbing after a while, but I think it would have been improved if the option to play at an even faster pace were included. The fast speed of your own robot is still quite slow.

There are also too many very lengthy waits between games. Even though the graphics on these interludes are beautifully smoothly done, they have you tapping your finger in impatience for the next game.

Not a bad game, but only fairly frenzied.

Mike Gerrard

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