Your Sinclair


Ole Toro

Author: Phil South
Publisher: Americana
Machine: Spectrum 48K

 
Published in Your Sinclair #11

Ole Toro

The opportunity to say that a game is a load of bull comes once in a lifetime, so far be it from me to pass up such a gift. I dunno why (I must've forgotten T'zer's birthday of summink) but it has fallen to me to experience the first, and if there's any justice, the very last bullfighting simulation. When you're writing a game, especially a budget one, it must be very easy to get so absorbed in the graphics and animation that you forget that some poor berk will want to play it. In order to play Ole Toro, the said berk would have to have eight fingers, half a brain and the co-ordination of a cross between an air-traffic controller and a gibbon.

For a start, there are too many keys to press. You can turn, attract the bull's attention, pass (flip the cape), picador (whatever that means), banderilla jump, thrust (well he is Spanish), and matador (something you wipe your feet on?). All these keys, when pressed seem to have the same effect, causing arbitary jerks and spasms of your puny little toreador, most of which result in him being casually flipped into the air and trampled by the character scrolled bull sprite. If you think this sounds awful you should play it.

It's boring, it's slow, it's painful, it's confusing... in it's all the things about real life fact you play computer game to avoid. Budget games have come on leaps and bounds recently, some competing on level ground with the best full price games, and in one or two cases getting to the top of the charts. So in the light of this fact, there's no excuse for this kind of unplayable and badly conceived rubbish.

Phil South

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