Amstrad Computer User
1st November 1985
Categories: Review: Software
Publisher: Domark
Machine: Amstrad CPC464
Published in Amstrad Computer User #12
A View To A Kill
This is a game of many parts. Well, three anyway, so get yourself a drink and sandwiches, this is going to be a long review. You take the role of 007 himself, James Bond. The game loads up with the famous view down a gun barrel and heralds itself with the Duran Duran theme tune. It then gives you the option of playing one of the three parts of the game. It is possible to play them in any order, but unless you complete them properly, you do not actually score anything.
The first game loads up and plays the Bond theme which, curiously, the other two don't. Then it is the job of superhero 007 to go on an un-guided tour of an unstable mine in Silicon Valley which contains an even more unstable bomb. The hazards you encounter are nothing compared with the number of times you can cause crashes. Honestly, this game has more bugs in it than the whole of the KGB. The problems centre around a grappling gun. If you use it while you are lying down stunned, a ghost Bond is formed standing by the rope. Furthermore, if you do a heroic swing from the grappling rope into the next screen, you find yourself hopelessly embedded in the scenery (Tarzan never had this problem). It is also possible to drive the lift off the screen and into the memory of the computer - not very clever. I spoke to Domark at the PCW show and they promised to do something about it.
You stun yourself by falling from a great height and hitting the ground with sickening thud. After which, you feel a bit washed out. When you have dragged Mayday out of the mine, you are given a codeword which lets you into the second part of the game. I didn't get it but you can play on without getting a score for your troubles. The 'Now stop your cassette' messages smack too strongly of a Spectrum conversion.
When you get to the second game (the bit in the multi-storey building if you have seen the film), the graphics look vaguely familiar. Apart from the fact that time is now being measured by a burning building and you are running through rooms instead of caverns, not a lot has changed. You still can't drop more than one thing on a screen. About the only new touch is that you need to open cupboards to retrieve objects. This process requires a key and doesn't actually show you an open cupboard or an object when you are done. To get the object you must look again. Technically, this is known as a cop-out.
I have the sneaking suspicion that sometimes this section of the game is impossible to complete but I never managed to complete it under favourable conditions anyway. Now for the Paris car chase.
This does use different sprites and graphics from the previous parts and has you driving about Paris in your car, without attracting too much attention from the French police by, say, crashing into them. The reason for this is that Mayday has just jumped off the top of the Eiffel tower. Being a smart girl, she remembered her parachute and is in the process of falling to Earth. With any luck she will not miss and you will follow her about and be at the landing site to pick her up won't you?
Unfortunately, the French are the worst double-parkers in the known universe and a lot of time is spent dodging cars and consequently extracting yourself from the side of a building. One bug here: I managed to get my car completely stuck by ramming another car at an angle and going into the side of a building simultaneously. Don't ask me for a lift. Try as I might, I couldn't get onto the launch site to meet Mayday. The car kept on bouncing off, but then, I'm a lousy driver anyway. This means that I didn't finish this bit either.
This game certainly gives you something to keep trying at, but whether it's skill or bugs I'm not quite sure.
Other Reviews Of A View To A Kill For The Amstrad CPC464
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A View To A Kill (Domark)
Bond has, at last, burst onto the computer screen. Tony Hetherington takes an indepth look at A View To A Kill