Crash


Here Comes The Sun

Author: Derek Brewster
Publisher: Alligata
Machine: Spectrum 48K/128K

 
Published in Crash #5

Here Comes The Sun

A massive space station is on collision course with the sun and it's your unenviable task to prevent a solar explosion turning the universe into a black pudding (all right, it didn't actually say that but you know how it gets after reading so many cassette covers).

Playing Here Comes The Sun you get the impression of an adequate but unpolished piece of software. I'll show you what I mean.

The program spends one minute loading a screen which is left there for only 12 seconds before being deleted. This is replaced by a list of the vocabulary - useful, but should it be placed on a loading screen which is lost when the game starts? On the loading screen vocabulary is mis-spelt and this is a foretaste of things to come. If you're struggling with the word LASER that's because the computer has been programmed to expect LAZER.

Here Comes The Sun

Although the space station appears large there are no location descriptions, more location statements really. Many locations are repeated and so some loss of atmosphere is inevitable. The half dozen or so graphic descriptions add little to the adventure.

You can be randomly killed for no apparent reason in locations where you have previously been safe. I'm no great fan of the random element - at best it's irritating, at worst it can dissuade you from playing again.

Once you've settled into the run of things you come to the exertion area to be confronted with a primitive arcade ski slope game no better than the type found in program listings of what seems like eons ago. However, not all is gloom. The adventure is interspersed with a thousand funny ways of dying. Oh, well...

Derek Brewster

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