Commodore User


Mrs. Mop

Categories: Review: Software
Author: Ferdy Hamilton
Publisher: Ariolasoft
Machine: Commodore 64

 
Published in Commodore User #48

Mrs. Mop

As you may have gathered, Mrs. Mop is a cleaner. And what a vicious old bat she is too! But can you really blame her? For every day she must be up at the crack of dawn to clean the floors of Boulder Hall school. That may sound easy enough, but the annoying little scamps insist on running about the school and getting in her way.

Now Mrs. Mop, usually a very timid lady, has taken it upon herself to become armed and dangerous, she has an artillery consisting of soap bars which will prove lethal to any pupil, when aimed properly! She has also taken 'Gleamo' a new wonder cleaning fluid, which by rights, you should need a licence to use. Can you take the role of the Rambo cleaner and literally (in the immortal words of most tough guys) "Clean up this place?"

Mrs. Mop starts in the school with the task of cleaning two small rooms, so with bucket in one hand, soap in the other, and gleamos in a box marked "highly toxic" off she trots.

Mrs Mop

The screen view from above, is similar to the likes of Gauntlet, but that honestly is as far as the similarity goes.

When you first enter the school building, you will notice that the floors are all a grey colour but once you run over them with your scrubbing brush and bucket, their true colour shines out. To clean the floor, you must first make sure you are in scrubbing brush mode (not in soap mode) and then just run over the dirty patches on the floor whilst holding down your fire button.

To clear each level, you must not only clean the floors, but also kill all the scum that attempt to get in your way. "Scum" that is, if you are a cleaner, and that's what you regard pupils and teachers as. Well, anyway, you've got to kill these by lobbing a deadly soap bar at their... [Use your imagination! - Ed]. The other way to get rid of the nasties is to use one of the deadly toxic Glemos. Gleamo is a strong, new detergent bomb.

Mrs Mop

To add to her grief, poor old violent Mrs. Mop also has a bad back. When it is touched by any of the invaders it gets worse. The school nurse will then proceed to advise you to take a week off. You then have the choice of ignoring the silly old quack's advice and carrying on your job, or taking a week off. The trouble is you can't just sack the nurse and carry on bringing in the dough, because if you choose to ignore her advice and your back goes again this time the injury could mean early retirement from your favoured profession. Still, if you do decide to take a week off you are fine, but then you only have a fairly small score. So it's up to you to decide when you feel your lumbago deserves a rest.

Even with that nurse caper the game doesn't sound too hard, you might thing. Wrong. Once you've commenced scouring anything can happen. For one thing your back could go. Another problem, which I haven't yet mentioned it, is that your bucket could need refilling, in which case you'd have to hike all the way to the nearest bathroom. And there's also one other niggling hassle which makes me want to scoop out my eyeballs with a desert spoon, which is that when you go bump into a certain kind of nasty he dirties the whole of the floor surrounding you. But the worst thing, oh yes, believe me this is the pits, is that when you wish to swap between soap (attack) mode, and brush (clean) mode, you have to hit the return key you are usually doing it in a state of panic and do not have time to make sure that return is the only key you're hitting. Well, you'd better find time to check, because if you should wander to Return's neighbour Restore, the game will crash and you will have to reload. A pain not needed.

Apart from the above prob (which I am promised will be rectified for you lot) the game is great. A good sadistic little creation from Reaktor, who are now beginning to produce some excellent products. This little number isn't spectacular enough to be in the realms of the exalted Screen Star. But I do have a feeling that - for under a fiver - it's going to while away a lot of your boredom this long, unhot, summer.

Ferdy Hamilton

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