Previous Next

Let's get one thing straight from the start. This is not, as the blurb claims, a "truly stunning and imaginative game". It's barely OK, and even then I suspect I'm being a little generous.

What you have to do is get to the top of the castle walls which fill each of the screens. Each wall consists of four levels - on two of them you have to jump over things, while on the other two you have to hop on moving platforms.

On the lowest level, there are purple frogs (?) in pits who periodically leap up and down. If you clear them you ascend a ladder and try to hop on a rapidly moving platform. Get to the top of the screen and you go on to the next wall. Which looks remarkably like the first.

But now you're faced with the additional problems of rocks dropping down and a rampaging duck patrolling the screen. As on screen 1, the whole technique involves timing your movements correctly. Exciting it isn't, frustrating it is.

Graphically the game is not exactly state-of-the-art but that wouldn't be such a drawback for a budget label if the task were rather more interesting. Sadly, Castle Assault is pretty dull.

Please, please, please take this game away from me before I batter the keyboard to pieces. This is the sort of frustrating, infuriating and annoying game that once passed for addictive. In truth, they are just small games that have to be manically hard to play so that you're hard-pressed to get off the first screen. With such horrible control, it's just as well there's no joystick option - I'd have snapped mine in frustration!

P. Frustrating - if you like that kind of thing.

N. Hard to control.
N. Tedious game task.
N. Unimpressive graphics and sound.