Commodore User


Amaurote

Author: Mark Patterson
Publisher: Mastertronic Added Dimension
Machine: Commodore 64/128

 
Published in Commodore User #45

Amaurote

Yet another offering from Mastertronic's MAD label, unfortunately it's a bad one. Why? Well the sound's nice, so are the graphics, but the gameplay, well, that's another kettle of bees. Why bees? Well, let me explain...

You are the only surviving member of the Amaurote Royal Army. Bet that surprised you. In fact, instead of being your standard computer hero you're the opposite, you only survived because of a yellow streak the size of a 3 foot banana running down your back. Anyway, the kindhearted Amaurote Government have supplied you with an Arachnus 4 armoured car capable of firing anti-anything bouncing bombs, which is pretty nifty, the only problem being you can only fire one bomb at a time which often means a long wait, as the bombs are still active after they have left the screen. The Government has also given you a grant totalling to $5,000,000 and they want the change back, the tightfisted old so and so's. And what is all this in aid of? Well, Amaurote's cities have been taken over by giant bees and you have to rid the planet and her lands of these insectoid foe.

You start the game with a map of Amaurote's cities with our car slap in the middle. YOu can then muck around a bit until you decide on a city, which, if you wish to continue, you must enter.

Amaurote

The first thing about the city, is that it is deserted, which is strange. I was under the impression I should be mauling my joystick while wading kneedeep in bee guts. After about ten minutes it sank in that the person who wrote the text in the game inlay was either the worst liar in the known universe, or I had overlooked something in the instructions. It turned out that I had in fact overlooked something in the instructions. I actually had a scanner! Wow, maybe I'll be able to find a huge concentration of bees and get down to some critical killin', I thought. I followed the directionsas stated by the scanner, and to me amazement, I found a bee. I use the singular, because that is exactly what it was one single solitary bee. Ho hum, maybe I'll go after the queen; after all, she should be the hive of activity.

So off I went, found a bee in a black box, called up a supa bomb via the radio which is the only added extra on your car, fired and up went the queen. Is that it? So I continued until I had disposed of all the remaining six-legged nose stingers on the level. Then I noticed my energy, not a pretty sight! On went the radio up went the energy, and down went my cash, by about $12,000. At this rate I thought I might possibly stand a fair chance of completing the game, but sanity prevailed, and my brain waved the white flag.

Lovely atmospheric music which restarts after every use of the radio, nice graphics, but not much in the way of gameplay. Perhaps you should do something else while it's on.

Mark Patterson

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