Previous Next

The evil Polon tribe have been causing a bit of a rumpus out on the eastern spiral arm of our beautiful galaxy. They've been bashing innocent civilizations, blowing up suns and overriding all of the space channels with horrible telly programs. The Powers That Be on good old Earth have decided that this has gone too far, and have sent a warship out there to give them their come-uppance. You play the warship's pilot, and it's your job to guide it through the extremely well-armed Polon defence system.

Bulldog is a vertically scrolling shoot-'em-up in which you must fly over a well-defended landscape and strafe ground installations. There are no alien craft to hassle you, but the emplacements on the surface of the planet hurl missiles and bombs in an attempt to bring you down. Six types of installation exist: the slow and fast trajectory types which fire bullets straight at you, shielders (which lob extra wide bullets down the screen), sprayers (which hurl bullets in all directions), straights (which fire two bullets, horizontally then vertically) and finally homers (which fire highly dangerous homing missles). There are also four types of wall which can't be crossed and require varying amounts of shots to destroy them.

The warship can move anywhere on the screen. As you fly over the landscape you will see squares with letters inscribed upon them. If the ship is guided over one of these, it will change for better or for worse. For example, if an S is collected, your ship will speed up, an F gives you extra firepower and a B gives bonus firepower and auto-repeat (so you don't have to keep pressing the fire button to fire). Multiples of these letters can be collected to build your ship into a real force to reckoned with, the only problem is that all these powers, as well as one of your five lives are lost if the warship is hit by a missile. Other special powers which can be collected include temporary indestructibility and the ability to clear the screen of enemy missiles (a sort of smart bomb effect). It is also possible to scroll the screen faster and reverse the scrolling to avoid hitting walls (or to go back for a second shot at the targets).

Some of the letter squares are best avoided - those with a backward S slow your ship down, a D drains your extra power, and a square with a horizontal arrow reduces your movement to left and right only.

If you manage to fly right over the defence system, you will encounter a Polon Mothership, a big and beefy affair which scrolls down the screen towards your tiny little warship and then stops, spewing missiles and bombs. This can only be destroyed by shooting off its gun turrets. When they've all been destroyed, the mothership explodes and you're transported to the next (more hazardous) Polon defence system.

The game continues in this fashion with the ground emplacements getting more and more vicious and the motherships growing bigger and bigger. If all this seems a bit daunting, don't worry too much - you can earn extra lives at regular point intervals.

It's a shame that there isn't more to this game - if there were alien ships swirling around it would be brilliant. As it stands, shooting the ground emplacements gets dull very quickly due to the lack of variety.

The gameplay is also unchallenging, building up a huge reserve of extra lives is very easy and you can keep on going and going very little practice. If you're after a good shoot-'em-up, shop around, there are plenty better than this.

Coo, a scrolling game. In fact, a scrolling game with things to shoot at. Again, it does possess some interesting effects, such as when the ships disappear into a sparkle.

However, the pace of the game is, on the whole, slow. It does get a bit faster further on, but not much. Bulldog didn't enthuse me that greatly. It looks and sounds okay, but it's rather dull to play.

Gremlin started out with consistently good product about a year ago, but now they seem to have sunk to consistently average. Bulldog would make a good budget release, as it features some nice music and graphics and mildly addictive gameplay.

But as a fully-priced game - well, it's lacking. There is something about the game that makes you want to play it for a bit, but that soon wears off.

If you want a fast-paced shoot-'em-up, then I wouldn't recommend this.

Presentation 76%
Pleasant title screen and high-score table, but little else.

Graphics 78%
Good backdrops, but they're all very similar and get very repetitive.

Sound 70%
Reasonable title screen ditty, and the spot effects range from average to pretty good.

Hookability 69%
Simple and obvious blasting action mean that it's easy to get into.

Lastability 57%
Repetitive and unrewarding gameplay soon gives way to boredom.

Value For Money 55%
Not enough content to warrant such a high price tag.

Overall 60%
A simple blasting game which provides a couple of hours' entertainment.