ST Format


Action Pack

Publisher: Action 16
Machine: Atari ST

 
Published in ST Format #31

Action Pack

Ten games on ten disks works out at £2.70 per game. Goodness me, it's almost PD prices. So what would you expect for that?

Maya: Arcade adventure of stunning mediocrity. It's big though, and you travel round a map (provided), looking for dead archaeologists and Mayan artefacts which must be worth a few bob to someone. Maya is showing its age, but fans can happily get stuck into it for a while.

Fast Lane: Try and win the C1 motor car racing championship, racing on nine circuits. Lotus Challenge this most certainly isn't. But it's pretty playable and there's quite a bit to do - mainly fiddling with parts of the car.

Targhan: Fantasy platform scroller which sees you beating up the minions of the pixel king. It's not particularly inspiring, but you can just about stick with it.

On Safari: Move the cursors to photograph wild animals and murder poachers. But don't mix up your camera with your gun or, shock of shocks, you might injure some wildlife and annoy Jonathan Porritt!

Eliminator: Belt along a series of alien tunnels while avoiding or destroying the very aliens who created them. Collect more powerful weapons and try to survive until you get bored.

Hostages: Shoot terrorists from windows, blow them up in 3Dish embassies and win a medal. There are three stages in which to do this. The SAS has an awful lot to answer for, that's for sure.

Cosmic Pirate: Admit you've played this game in public and win another medal. You must rid the galaxy of everything, but try and bias your destruction towards baddies. It's a blaster with several stages.

Colorado: Search for Pocahontas' gold mine by wandering along several Indian-infested levels. Arrange pow-wow peace talks and kill everyone who turns up unarmed. Win a medal for xenophobia.

Rotor: Fight a weak Asteroids-like gravitational pull and steer your craft in order to collect crystals of power. Then do it again, in a slightly different location. The future of everything depends on how well your gravitational pull-beating abilities bear up.

Sherman M4: Blow up unrealistic German tanks in the Ardennes or Normandy with your own Battlezone-like vehicles. 3D whizzaround graphics and stupid enemies make M4 easy to play, but hard to enjoy.

Verdict

These ten games are extremely varied and could provide hours of fun for the not-very-discerning user. At the price, you actually get a lot, but none of them are actually much good.

In Brief

  1. Can run on single-sided disks.
  2. Keep the kids out of the kitchen with this compilation
  3. There's a wide variety of software here, and, for the money, it beats picking PD games at random!