Your Sinclair


The O-Zone

Author: Mike Gerrard
Publisher: Compass
Machine: Spectrum 48K/128K

 
Published in Your Sinclair #15

The O-Zone

The 'O' Zone is interesting on two counts, the first that it's an unofficial sequel to Project X: The Micro Man, and secondly it's the first release I've seen making use of Gilsoft's The Press, which gave the authors an extra 7K of memory for their text and graphics. Hard to tell how effective that is on your first few plays with a game, but as yet it seems to me to be another average everyday adventure. You don't play a miniaturised hero in this one, instead you're Agent 37 whose task it is to find Professor Neil Richards, who dramatically disappeared when one of his experiments went wrong.

You begin outside a lab with nothing but a pair of dark glasses for company, though they help you get through your first problem. So does the fact that the command you need is listed in the sample vocabulary you're given at the start of the game, along with the solution to a later teaser! Initial problems are usually easy, but the ones in this adventure didn't seem to get that much tougher. Having unearthed about half of the 80 locations fairly quickly, I took my first look at the cheat-sheet to see that there weren't all that many more hurdles to overcome. The inevitable spelling errors didn't help, with it's/its, aisle/isle and cubical/cubicle all getting confused.

Some nice touches, and I like the red herring at the airport (which I can't reveal as I'd like you to get caught by it too), but nothing brilliant and about right for the price.

Mike Gerrard

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