Previous Next

Lazer Tag was hyped hugely at the PCW show last Autumn as the "latest craze from America" that we all ought to be interested in. A bit like primary school playground war where you surprise your enemy with an imaginary gun, shout 'bang' and he is dead except that the game now takes place in a futuristic set, and your guns use micro-beams to register direct hits on recorder devices worn on each player's chest.

It's a bit like one of those war games: Combat Zone, for instance, only with a sci-fi theme. The real Lazer Tag is operated by a company called Worlds of Wonder at dozens of centres all over America.

So how does it work as a computer game? Well, not very well has to be the first and most glaringly obvious observation about this game.

It was programmed for Go! by the development house Probe who were also incidentally responsible for a number of the OutRun conversions. And, in fairness to Probe, they did start the design with a fairly serious handicap - the insistence of the Lazer Tag owners that the computer interpretation by completely non-violent. A pretty tall order for any computer game designer.

What they've come up with is a combat game where you man scrolls in all directions, firing his lazer at the other six players. What's non-violent about that? you may wonder. Well, the men don't actually explode; the targets on their chests simply glow and your 'hit' meter counts down.

Certain items are scattered around the floor, like a gun and length of chain - though picking them up serves no purpose that I could work out!

As you scroll up-screen there are fences at the end of each section. Your man occasionally sticks to these again, for no discernable reason. A tank-like vehicle may also rumble across the screen or a copter appears and starts strafing you, but there appears to be nothing you can do about these.

The lazer gun fire itself has a neat idea, in that the bullets can bounce off angles to hit their targets. Quite complex patterns of lines can therefore streak around the screen. This could have been the basis of a challenging game, especially if two players could have played it simultaneously. Unfortunately, you have such little control over the laser and your player that it fails totally. It is entirely down to chance whether you hit the targets or not.

To add to the frustration, Lazer Tag is also an "against the clock" game, so that, just as you are trying to work out what the blazes is actually going on, you have to start all over again.

The play area is dotted with spinning satellite dishes which, according to the instructions, increase your firepower when you shoot them. Not so in my version, though. I blasted away at them for ages - all to no avail.

It would be possible to go on listing the faults of this game but it wouldn't serve much purpose really. What we have here is game design that was only half thought-out and an implementation only partially carried through. This would have received a lukewarm reception as a budget title - but at ten quid our advice is avoid it like the plague.

This is an unfortunate release for Go! - as they do have some excellent other titles about to be launched such as Bionic Commandos and Wizard Wars. Lazer Tag is the dog in the pack.