Amstrad Computer User


Skweek

Categories: Review: Software
Publisher: Loriciels
Machine: Amstrad CPC464

 
Published in Amstrad Computer User #55

Skweek

Get this. Skweek is a cute orange, furry blob with the sort of eyes that make women come over all maternal. His land has been invaded by the evil Pitark and his Skarks (yes, yes, I know), who have contaminated it with a blue skweeticide, banishing forever Skweek's people.

Now I just bet you're feeling really broken up over this. Well wipe your eyes, sniff back that snot and grab a joystick because it's payback time!

Good old Skweek is going in alone (that brave and noble hero of the realm) to clear his land of the Skarks and erase once and for all the skweeticide.

Skweek

You control Skweek, (that crazy heroic fool), as he moves across the landscape which consists of various patterns of coloured squares, the majority of which are blue, indicating that they have been infected by the skweeticide. Whenever you manoeuvre Skweek (that courageous fool), over one of these squares it becomes cleansed, and returns to its natural colour, a nauseating shade, of pink that reminded me of on uncooked Walls sausage my cat had just coughed up.

When you have turned all the squares pink the level is completed and you can move on to the next one. There are 99 levels in total to clear before the world is once again fit to live in.

If only life was that simple. There are a number of hazards along the way, the most obvious are the numerous nasties that hunt you down with the persistency of a T.V. detector van.

Skweek

Fortunately they are predictable and easy to avoid or shoot, unless they happen to be fast moving or indestructible, that it. Some squares will sprout metal jaws that vomit forth more nasties, and then disappear, only to reappear again, usually at the very moment you decide to cross.

The landscape is littered with impassable barriers that slow down movement, but which can also be used to ricochet your bullets around the screen to deadly effect. Many of the infected blue squares have arrows emblazoned on the indicating that movement is possible only in one direction and you must take care not to find yourself herded into the clutches of a nasty. Other squares are grey in appearance upon which movement is decidedly less controlled and even worse are the squares that vanish beneath Skweek's, (that suicidal maniac), furry feet! The final sickening body blow is a time limit and strop. So... I'm allowed to.

Despite my ineptitude I found the game quite addictive, with lots of failure to clear a level in the allotted time means the loss of a life.

Skweek

Now then, I expect all those limp wristed lackies of mine out there in boring surburbia will want to know how your keyboard hardened, rock jawed joystick adonis of a reviewer handled this game.

Well, I'll tell you. A lobotomised monkey could have done better. To begin with I could only complete one level after playing about twenty games, and then went into a childish action taking place on screen. There are a number of bonuses to pick up along the way such as the Turbo symbol that increases your speed, the Freeze, which immobilises all forms of nasties, and the multifire which deals you a nice line in high calibre weaponry. All of this increases your chance of becoming a furry legend to your people.

The more levels cleared, the harder it gets, and pretty soon I have my Skweek, (that raving gung-ho headcase), burning up that screen as if he had just eaten a four pound 'suicide' bar of ex-lax, God, I was magnificent. Before long the screen came to resemble one of Cyndi Lauper's haircuts; a riot of pink, blue and green. The accompanying jingle affronted my cultured ears with melodic atrocities not experienced since the time I stuffed my head in the bass bins at a Motorhead concert. Some time later I was gently led away from the defiled keyboard, a broken, burnt out shell of a man. Skweek, (that psycho gun-nut), had defeated me. I had only managed to complete the first five levels.

But I'll be back.