Monsters

Anyone who has played and enjoyed the game Space Panic in an arcade will find that Monsters is quite a good game. The idea of the game is to kill off monsters by burying them. There are walkways and ladders for your man to run along. You have a shovel with which you can dig holes into which the monsters fall. When a monster does hall, you must quickly fill the hole in. If you fail to do so, he will be more powerful when he forces his way out of the hole. You have a limited oxygen supply, and as it is used up, you will not be able to run or dig as quickly.

On the first screen there are three monsters. After this, you will find that it is not so easy. After a couple of screens, a green monster arrives. He has to be knocked through two levels. The white one, who appears later, must fall three levels before he is killed. They are very hard to kill. However, any two monsters can be killed by dropping one onto the other. This fact is very useful to know. After about four screenfuls, you gain a extra life, which you will need very soon afterwards. The game speeds up considerably after this point and you have to be very quick to avoid disaster.

The graphic quality of the game is good but not outstanding. The man really runs and the monstes look very mean. This is one type of game where graphic talent on a machine can not easily be shown, and Monsters does not show it!

The game is let down a little by the sound. There is nothing remotely exciting at all in this category. I feel that a little more should have been done to improve the quality of sounds.

The controls pose another problem. They are the standard ZX*? but the dig and fill actions are operated using D and F which are too far away to be used easily. You have to take your hand off one set of controls to dig or fill and this can lead to problems. I have suffered many an untimely death due to this. Joysticks cannot be used unless you alter the program as in A&B Computing. I feel that this is a valuable addition to the game.

Verdict

Good, but expensive at £9.95. Not as refined as it should be.

Dave Reeder