Previous Next

Ultimate, the software house every other company compares their software to, have released their first game for the Amstrad CPC 464. And it's a real cracker.

Knight Lore is a multi-roomed graphic adventure, placing you in the shoes of a young explorer who has been cursed with a spell that turns him into a werewolf at sunset and doesn't return him to normality until dawn.

Your quest is to help the explorer find the wizard Melkhior and cure him of the werewolf curse. But it must be done within 40 days or the spell will become permanent, and he will become a werewolf forever.

The game is an adventure through literally hundreds of rooms, displayed in three-dimensional perspective. Unlike the Spectrum version of Knight Lore, the game has more than one colour on the screen at the same time. The difference this makes to the game is extraordinary.

The detail contained in the graphics actually shows up, instead of being hidden by a murky screen bathed in the same coloured light. It also makes it simpler to guide your character around the dungeon, as you can actually keep track of what's going on. Even if your player disappears behind another object, you know where he is, instead of frantically having to search of frantically having to search for a tiny corner of his head poking over a wall.

One interesting part of the game is that you can actually push objects from room to room. And, according to the manual, you need to do this if you are to stand any chance of completing the game.

Overall, I liked the game - which is not something I could have said about Knight Lore on the Spectrum. The extra colour to the game does add a startling new dimension to the program, but I wouldn't like to see the next Ultimate game for the Amstrad to be a clone of Knight Lore.

I mean, why buy more than one Ultimate game nowadays, good as they are? It's not worth playing ten pound each for games which are so similar to their predecessors that it's hard to tell the difference between them.