Previous Next

Task Set have a brilliant slogan - "The Bug Stops Here!" - but the games I've seen from them so far don't quite match up to the suggested sharpness. Super Pipeline is a kind of externalised maze game: you control a burly, overalled bloke who's a pipeline foreman (he marches on-screen to the strains of Laurel and Hardy's cuckoo song - not something to inspire confidence, methinks) and he trots genially around a serpentine pipe structure doggedly followed by one of his diminutive repairmen.

As oil courses through the pipe, nasties resembling carmine woodline beetle up a ladder and pursue your men around the pipe, while a sinister hombre called the Ladderman sneaks up the same route and tries to plug the line. You blast them with an inexhaustible handgun and try and save oil - once the fuel gauge reaches a set figure you're on to the next screen - while keeping an eye on the dreaded Lobster that sometimes crawls in from behind.

A droll understanding, overscored with deafening music. The problem with the game is it suddenly gets too hard: the first three pipes are easy but from thereon, it's damn near impassable. The screen display's dark backdrop makes the action lucid and bright, and I like the way you can set up your workmen's demise in order to save your own skin when cornered. Finally, though, more frustrating than fulfilling.