Amstrad Action


Zed
By Paul Robson
Amstrad CPC464

 
Published in Amstrad Action #63

ZED

ZED

You're settling down to play your favourite game when a poor quality pirate program appears which you can't get rid of. This is the threat posed by Madstar Satellite Industries, owned by Dr. Kryptic.

You take the part of 'The Controller' of ISIS, the Institute for the Suppression of Inferior Software. You must save the world by destroying the transmitter responsible for this threat. Confused? So was I! What the transmitter has to do with my CPC and how the pirate program got on the machine, I have no idea!

To help you on your quest, you have a droid called ZED (Zetetic Enumerative Droid) which is controlled by a ZIP (Zetetic Instruction Parser unit). By using this ZIP you can swap control between yourself and ZED. This makes for some very clever puzzles where you swap between two totally different characters - a little like the robots in Infocom's Suspended.

The scenario put me straight off the game but I gave ZED a chance and was pleasantly surprised - the dual character control is an original idea (it has only been used once before on a CPC game) and the game area is large - over 100 locations. Added to all this is a cunning 3D maze, to give you a difficult but addictive adventure. There are even two versions to the game, depending on whether you use the male or the female toilet near the start (Bit of a rip off from Leather Goddesses, methinks!)

The only problem is that the game may be too difficult - some of the clues it gives for a code (which is needed to turn off the above mentioned transmitter) are very obtuse and even misleading. All in all, a good game to buy if you like difficult games, otherwise steer clear.

The Pilgrim

ZED

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