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At long last Ultimate have finished Pentagram. Was it worth the wait?

For a long time now we've all been waiting for Ultimate to come up with a megagame that would have all our minds as totally boggled as Knight Lore did when it first appeared. Since then, many other software houses have leapt on the 3D bandwagon and the novelty of that style of graphics has worn off. What's more, Ultimate themselves have tarnished their reputation somewhat with a number of distinctly non-mega releases (mainly for the Commodore 64), but through it all we've sat patiently waiting for Pentagram, the latest in the Sabreman series and the direct sequel to Knight Lore.

The trouble with reviewing this game lay in the conflicting expectations that had been built up. On one hand we all expect a lot from Ultimate because of their past reputation, whilst on the other there's the memory of those recent disappointments, so it's quite tricky to forget all that and just judge the game on its own merits.

As usual the introduction and instructions on the cassette inlay are obscure to the point of irrelevance. There's nothing wrong with the instructions being vague, since that's always added an extra twist as you attempt to unravel all the intricacies of the games, but I can't help thinking that since US Gold took over the marketing of Ultimate's games, the cassette blurbs have become just so much badly written waffle. There are references to stars and runes and stone shapes, but the grammar's so awful it's unclear what it's all about.

Starting to play the game reveals that there are slightly fewer control options than in past games. Instead of the directional control that allowed you to move Sabreman in the direction that you move the joystick, there's now just the rotate option: this means that moving the joystick left/right rotates Sabreman anti-clockwise or clockwise and pushing the stick forwards then makes him walk in whatever direction he's facing. Jumping is performed by pulling the joystick backwards. I found this a more difficult way of controlling Sabreman's movement and got myself killed off a fair number of times as a result, though to be fair this game requires less of the precision timing and movement that Knight Lore and Alien 8 required. In addition, there are controls for firing magic missiles and pick up/drop.

The Sabremans latest adventure sends him searching for the Pentagram of the title. The Grand Arch Wizardry spell book tells of 'silvery waters' drawn from ancient wells, runes and stars, and of the Pentagram taking on solid form once more. Thankfully Pentagram is a return to the Knight Lore format, rather than the style of Nightshade and Gunfright. The graphics are in the now familiar Knight Lore style - a view of each location from a point that is just above head height, though not directly overhead. Locations are drawn in just one colour to avoid attribute problems.

The Sabreman, now kitted out in a pointy hat and wizard's robe, is wandering around a forest landscape, dotted here and there with lily ponds and snare traps (fatal of course) and some castle ruins with all the usual spiky blocks, crumbling walkways and moving stairs. I always found the complex sets of obstacles the most enjoyable part of playing Knight Lore and missed that element in Gunfright and Nightshade, so I was glad to see that they were all back in Pentagram, though there is slightly more emphasis on monster-zapping in this game than in Knight Lore.

Apart from these obstacles, most locations are empty when you first enter them, but after just a few seconds all sorts of ghosts and ghoulies start to appear and chase after you. There are witches on broomsticks, zombies, ghosts, giant spiders and what appear to be giant pear-drops which boune around after you. None of these are instantly fatal but repeated contact with them takes its toll and eventually leads to your going up in a puff of smoke. They don't move terribly quickly so it's not too hard to get lined up and zap a magic missile at them, but the longer you hang around, the more of them will appear. This does have drawbacks, because on some of the busier screens where there might be both monsters and moving blocks as well as the Sabreman himself, the movement of everything on screen does slow down a lot. It might have been a good idea to make sure that locations didn't get overcrowded, though this doesn't happen so often that it's a major flaw.

The runes are large stone tablets each with a distinctive mark carved on it, and of course they're all placed in the most inaccessible locations and surrounded by traps. The same applies to the wells tucked away in various corners of the forest.

There are a number of small stone pyramids in the forest and I think that they've got something to do with the Pentagram itself, though I haven't yet managed to work out exactly what. I've tried jumping on them, zapping them, pushing them over - all to no avail, so I supposed that I'm just going to have to make the ultimate sacrifice (No pun intended) and go back to playing the game until I've solved it all. It's not easy being a games reviewer...

A Monster Hit.