Once more into the breach... It's the Update Page with a couple of little numbers such as last-minute releases, re-formatted games and the odd, odd or sod which didn't make it into Screen Scene. So 'owsabout that, then?

In a piece of dodge German translation, the front of Evil Garden's manual has "Beware of Demonware" written across the bottom. They couldn't be more right if they'd tried.

I knew this was going to be painful when, after taking a good two minutes to load, the game asked me to enter a word from a non-existent page. I didn't realise at the time that it was trying to be kind.

Booting it up a second time turned out to be a grievous error. Evil Garden is a garish, low quality Centipede rip-off. Everything takes hours to load. The sprites are tiny, the sound effects poor and the gameplay weak to indifferent. There is a kind of mellow tedium that sets in after ten or fifteen minutes effortlessly blasting through screens of centipedes, but you would be in need of the most fearsome kind of aversion therapy if you parted with twenty quid for this load of old guff. Evil Garden is weedy.

Overall 17%

I knew they couldn't keep it up, I just knew it. All SSI AD&D games have been of the highest quality. Heroes Of The Lance on the C64, however, is a programming catastrophe. The idea behind the game is the same as the excellent 16-bit version, only the presentation isn't half as good.

Blocky sprites move around against a blocky backdrop. The sound effects are pretty bad too. Even the digitised pics at the bottom of the screen leave a lot to be desired. The feel is sloppy, the game is tedious and there is none of the atmosphere generated on the Amiga. Let's hope it's only a hiccup.

Overall 29%

This is the pits. Probably one of the worst Amiga games ever to grace our machine. It is a horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up with some of the worst graphics ever.

The sound is abysmal and, worst of all, the gameplay is non-existent.

Quasar should not have been released at any price. Oh, and its cover artwork is wonderfully bad.

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In a piece of dodge German translation, the front of Evil Garden's manual has "Beware of Demonware" written across the bottom. They couldn't be more right if they'd tried.

I knew this was going to be painful when, after taking a good two minutes to load, the game asked me to enter a word from a non-existent page. I didn't realise at the time that it was trying to be kind.

Booting it up a second time turned out to be a grievous error. Evil Garden is a garish, low quality Centipede rip-off. Everything takes hours to load. The sprites are tiny, the sound effects poor and the gameplay weak to indifferent. There is a kind of mellow tedium that sets in after ten or fifteen minutes effortlessly blasting through screens of centipedes, but you would be in need of the most fearsome kind of aversion therapy if you parted with twenty quid for this load of old guff. Evil Garden is weedy.

I knew they couldn't keep it up, I just knew it. All SSI AD&D games have been of the highest quality. Heroes Of The Lance on the C64, however, is a programming catastrophe. The idea behind the game is the same as the excellent 16-bit version, only the presentation isn't half as good.

Blocky sprites move around against a blocky backdrop. The sound effects are pretty bad too. Even the digitised pics at the bottom of the screen leave a lot to be desired. The feel is sloppy, the game is tedious and there is none of the atmosphere generated on the Amiga. Let's hope it's only a hiccup.

Previous Next

This is the pits. Probably one of the worst Amiga games ever to grace our machine. It is a horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up with some of the worst graphics ever.

The sound is abysmal and, worst of all, the gameplay is non-existent.

Quasar should not have been released at any price. Oh, and its cover artwork is wonderfully bad.