Zzap


Stormlord
By Hewson Consultants
Amiga 500

 
Published in Zzap #56

Stormlord

When the damsels in distress are as buxom and underdressed as those in Stormlord, risking life and limb for their rescue requires little explanation. Suffice to say around five faerie maidens have been imprisoned on each of the game's six levels (two more than the 8-bit versions). They are freed from the crystal prisons by Stormlord simply jumping on them. But of course, there's lots of baddies to prevent that, from beautifully designed flocks (?) of dragons to skeletons to catapillers. In addition, there's keys to find, bees to distract, flames to quench and umbrellas to utilize. Finding the correct order to do things is as important as learning enemy attack patterns.

If you complete a level, there's a sub-game where Stormlord blows a limited number of kisses at faeries flying overhead. When a kiss touches a faerie she cries and her tear can be collected for extra lives.

Robin

I'm honestly surprised how well Stormlord has come across in the process of conversion. The gameplay is still inherently 8-bit, but 16-bit graphics come into their own with wonderful sound effects to match (the crackling of the fire is so atmospheric and the Maniacs music is superb).

Stormlord

Dig deep into the game and there may not be great depth to it, but presentation is wonderful and playability extremely high.

Stu

After playing this so much on the Speccy and C64, I didn't expect to be too surprised by the Amiga port... but I was! The graphics are wonderful, the flickering of shadow around fire lamps on the castle, the way the faeries' hair moves when their crystal prisons bounce, the detail is great.

Sonix are no less impressive; the buzzing bees and wolf whistle in FX mode, or the Maniacs Of Noise soundtrack, are hard to choose between. Playability has been tweaked too, making it easier to get into than the superb C64 one. Highly recommended.

Verdict

Stormlord

Presentation 82%
Great loading screen and nice attract mode.

Graphics 92%
The first two levels are superb, with brilliant attention to detail. Thereafter there isn't too much new.

Sound 94%
Great soundtrack, amazing sound FX!

Stormlord

Hookability 90%
Good difficulty grading keeps you coming back to more to get that much further...

Lastability 84%
...but six levels aren't easily going to be beaten.

Overall 86%
The best 16-bit damsel rescuing game yet!