Your Sinclair


Destructo

Categories: Review: Software
Author: Richard Blaine
Publisher: Bulldog
Machine: Spectrum 48K

 
Published in Your Sinclair #22

Destructo

This is one of those games with a story behind it. In fact, just about every game on the market has a little story that goes with it. In Dr Destructo, you have to fly your intrepid little aeroplane through the defences surrounding the island base of the evil and eponymous Doctor, destroying his ships, aircraft carriers, oil tankers and so on.

At the same time, you have to shoot down as many of the enemy aeroplanes and helicopters as you can, while avoiding the satellites, space shuttles and other nasty things. But you couldn't do without them, because it's by shooting them down and causing them to crash onto whatever is at the bottom of the screen that you - very gradually - destroy whatever it is at the bottom of the screen. Every time a wrecked enemy plane crashes onto a ship or aircraft carrier, etc it makes a little hole. If you can get another wreck to hit the same place, the hole gets deeper. When the hole reaches the bottom of the whatever it is, a pretty little waterspout appears. Three waterspouts and the whatever it is should sink, and you go on to the next screen. Once a screen, you have a bomb, which seems to destroy a number of the budding blocks the target is made up of: use it wisely - you wouldn't have thought that it was easy to miss an aircraft carrier but I managed it.

This is a budget game, and perhaps we shouldn't expect too much from it. One the plus side, it has a certain appeal, although very little addictive quality. On the minus side, the graphics are clumsy and the game play becomes repetitive and boring... You're doing the same thing, screen after screen after screen. Just hold down the fire button and keep zooming across, if you're lucky you'll clobber enough enemy aircraft to knock holes in the target: if you're not, you'll run into something and lose a life. If you lose a life, you start again. I certainly haven't noticed any real element of skill in the game, but what the hell, its a cheap shoot 'em up. As budget games go, OK, but only just.

Cheap but less than cheerful aerial shoot 'em up with little variety or originality.

Richard Blaine

Other Reviews Of Destructo For The Spectrum 48K


Destructo (Bulldog)
A review by Nick Roberts (Crash)

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