Previous Next

Lumme, I could take up this page just describing the plot. But I'll try not to. You have to buy all the cities on the face of this moon (which doesn't orbit a planet) in order to free your ship's crew (who have been taken hostage, held by the moon's two indigenous races, the Roboforms and Remusians). Er, that's it. Catch one: you don't have enough money. So, that means going into business as a trader, buying raw materials from one moonbase and selling them to another until you're rich enough to own a planetoid. Phew, it's a good thing you've got a modified skimmer craft capable of carrying 200 tons of cargo. Catch two: pirates plague this moon and they're always on the look out for gimps like you with modified skimmer craft crammed with 200 tons of cargo. Ah.

A break from the tedium of buying, selling and not being shot to pieces comes in the form of a choice of missions. There are ten of these and they range from escorting a craft from one place to another in one, to destroying a fleet of invasion ships a little later on. Those of you thinking Eiite and/or Mercenary have got the picture.

Getting to grips with the controls is easy. We're not talking fight sim realism here. Your skimmer is always oriented horizontally and can bounce off mountains without needing so much as a new paint job, let alone a tub of plastic padding. The space bar acts as an accelerator and the Commodore key is the brake. There's a booster (which actually burns fuel more efficiently than the normal engine) and a navigation computer which indicates where various bases are. When you get to a base you can take your craft underground and walk through a wireframe maze of rooms and corridors, taking advantage of the diamond-shaped com-links you'll find dotted around. From these you can buy equipment, trade cargo, maybe glean a little information. There are plenty of plot elements (like the coordinates of hidden human colonies) to find.

The equipment list is worth a second glance, though most of it is so expensive you'll spend much of the game simply coveting it. Nevertheless, if more powerful weaponry, shields, special scanners, bait droids and missiles aren't on your shopping list, tear it up and start again. It's a tough world out there. And you need this stuff.

Or do you? Unless you get your curiosity gland caught on Moonfall fairly early on, you're unlikely to want to finish the game. It certainly doesn't offer much in the way of visuals. True, you can take some of the colour out of the graphics to make them run faster but they're still strikingly unimpressive. And a persistent glitch will upset perfectionists. Beyond that, the gameplay asks a lot of a novice player. It isn't that easy to win a dogfight without some of the better weapons, even if your skills as a pilot are beyond question. If you run out of fuel in the wilderness and don't have the credits to call-out the nearest craters equivalent of the AA, you - and the game - just sit there, waiting for the other to die. Or something. Sound effects are strictly of the buzz and hiss variety, so don't expect anything to tap your toes to while you wait for the world to end.

There are some atmospheric moments, like the first time you fly into a thunderstorm and the navigation computer goes ga-ga as lightning bolts blast the landscape for as far as the eye can see. Then there's the sense of achievement when you discover a colony landing pad nestled between the peaks of some anonymous mountain range. Even the dawn and sunset effects are likely to conjure up some response at first. But ultimately, this sort of adventure has been done better before. Elite, Tau Ceti and Mercenary all beat Moonfall hands down. But such games are rare now and if you haven't already got them a little lunacy could be just the thing.

1. This sort of game has been done better before.
2. Not exactly what you'd call exciting to play.
3. The ultimate goal (buying a planet) may be too hard to achieve.

1. The adventure is big enough to keep the most successful explorer occupied for weeks.
2. Apart from one graphics glitch, it's well programmed.
3. At its best when you stumble across the more atmospheric effects.
4. Ten missions of trouser-changing quality.
5. Loads of upgrades and equipment to buy en route.
6. Easy to get to grips with all the controls.