Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett From: c.j.coulson@newcastle.ac.uk (C.J.COULSON) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Zeewolf Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games Date: 18 Jan 1995 18:55:51 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 354 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <3fjo7n$faf@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: c.j.coulson@newcastle.ac.uk (C.J.COULSON) NNTP-Posting-Host: astro Keywords: game, arcade, shoot-em-up, commercial Originator: barrett@astro.cs.umass.edu PRODUCT NAME Zeewolf (Version 1.02) BRIEF DESCRIPTION A one-player arcade game with elements of Virus and Desert Strike all rolled into one. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Binary Asylum Address: 28 Brock Street Bath Avon ENGLAND BA1 2LN Telephone: (01225) 428494 (01225) 427954 for Customer Services FAX: (01225) 427950 E-mail: basylum@delphi.com NOTE: Binary Asylum, unlike other games companies, actually responds to e-mail, and not just with a standard reply either. RETURNS DEPARTMENT Address: Returns Dept. Empire Interactive The Spires 677 High Road North Finchley London ENGLAND N12 0DA Send only the disk, with a letter detailing the problem and a return mailing address. LIST PRICE 25.99 UK Pounds. In the UK it is available for 17.99 UKP from a very well known high street retailer. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE At least 0.5 MB Chip RAM At least 0.5 MB Fast RAM All processors from 68000 to 68030 are supported for definite. I don't know for certain whether the game works on a 68040 (or 68060...) so those of you with these processors may want to exercise a bit of caution if buying Zeewolf. Personally, I'd recommend at least a 68020 with some 32 Bit Fast RAM, and even then you'll notice some sluggishness once in a while. SOFTWARE None that I am aware of. COPY PROTECTION A non-standard disk format is used. Additionally, once the game is loaded and immediately prior to the first mission, you are asked to select three of the in-game vehicles, based on small pictures of these vehicles printed at the bottom of each page in the manual. The custom disk format is partially annoying, as it eliminates any possibility of hard drive installation (and is also responsible for problems with certain drive units - see BUGS, below). The manual protection would be acceptable on its own, but after listening to the floppy drive crunch its way through the on-disk protection it seems a little over the top. I'd rate the protection as annoying. (It would have been acceptable if it were manual-based only.) MACHINES USED FOR TESTING A500 7 MHz 68000 0.5 MB Chip RAM, 0.5 MB Slow RAM Kickstart Version 1.3 A4000 25 MHz 68030 2 MB Chip RAM, 4 MB Fast RAM Kickstart Version 3.0 INSTALLATION None required or possible. Just boot from the single disk supplied. (YES! a ONE disk game, in this day and age. Wow :-) REVIEW As a young lad I was a frequent visitor to my best friend's house, a friend with a passion for Acorn computers. One day, he excitedly phoned me up to say he'd just got a new machine, with a very impressive demo program. I went round and got my first taste of the program that was to become the much talked about Zarch. That game has been one of the few I have ever played that has left a lasting impression on me, and although an Amiga version (called Virus) was released. For some reason, I never bought a copy. Well, now I don't have to because along has come a new game that takes the Zarch idea, bolts on some heavy duty fire-power, kicks out any last shred of cuteness and comes striding out the door breathing fire and spitting a hail of lead.........ahem, I seem to have strayed from the point a bit. Zeewolf is, in short, a combination of the look and feel of Zarch with the fire-power and gameplay of Desert Strike. If you liked either game, you'll love Zeewolf. For the minority (?) who haven't heard of either game, Zeewolf takes the "externally viewed craft flying over a rolling patchwork landscape" aspect of Zarch, and adds a well armed helicopter gunship with the ability to pick up friendly troops and vehicles. Thus you can either think of Zeewolf as Desert Strike in polygons, or Zarch with superior firepower. The background story to the game is pretty much irrelevant, like all good arcade game background stories. Basically you are given a helicopter gunship and asked to eradicate the enemy forces over a series of 32 missions, varying from the ridiculously easy to the disturbingly tough. The difficulty varies almost at random, since the last four missions were surprisingly easy, whereas there were a couple of missions earlier on that I spent a few days on before finally beating them. Each mission consists of a wrap-around map of one or more islands, with a variable number of enemy land, air and sea forces. There will also be some friendly forces dotted around, although in most cases this simply means your resupply vehicle (which may take the form of an assault carrier or frigate, or may just be a little tracked vehicle based on land). There are one or more mission objectives, based on four basic types. 1: Kill the enemy 2: Rescue friendly troops 3: Retrieve damaged vehicles 4: Escort friendly vehicles home Cases 2 and 3 are as simple as they seem, with just the number of rescues/retrievals varying. Case 1, however, takes into account a wide range of objectives, from the destruction of just one or two specific enemy vehicles, to the complete destruction of the enemy presence on the map. In some missions you have help from friendly forces, namely the Buffalo tank. These are usually placed on board your carrier, requiring you to airlift them one at a time to the islands, or are located inside armoured domes, usually surrounded by enemy forces. Once located/released the Buffalo roams around looking for targets until it either destroys all targets in the vicinity or is itself destroyed. Case 4 is also deserving of a mention. These missions ask you to provide air support for one or more friendly aircraft (either transport helicopters or scout aircraft). Since you are the only friendly armed aircraft, it is usually a good idea to clear the flight path of any enemy presence before escorting the aircraft to the carrier. Note that in a multi-objective mission, the objectives could in theory be worked on in any order, but certain missions require targets to be destroyed/friendlies rescued before a certain time limit runs out. In these cases you must use your judgement as to the order in which you attempt the overall mission. The Zeewolf can only carry a limited amount of ammunition and fuel, so requires regular resupply. To do this there is always one or more resupply points on the map. These are usually Camel class resupply vehicles, either located on the islands or on the forward deck of the assault carrier. In some missions the resupply is provided by a frigate, with a resupply point on the rear landing pad. The amount of ammunition/fuel carried by each resupply point is limited, so it is a good idea not to waste any stores. Your armour rating cannot be increased by resupply, only through the rescue of friendly troops. If the mission has no troops to rescue, then you'd better be careful with your armour. If you are killed, then all the stores carried are destroyed as well, although if you have any lives remaining, then you continue the mission with slightly reduced stores. It is a good idea, if you are low on armour, to off-load ammunition at a resupply point, as you will be able to pick it up again with your next life. Control of the Zeewolf is carried out by either digital joystick or mouse, with some keyboard controls as well. For the beginner it may be easier to use the joystick, although I would recommend using the mouse from day one. Even though it makes controlling the Zeewolf a bit harder at first, you'll be glad of the extra accuracy of mouse control once you are used to it. Also, when you've completed all 32 missions, you'll really need to be good with the controls.......... I say no more on this; you'll just have to get past level 32 to see what I mean. After completing a set of four missions, you are rewarded with a password that allows you to start the game at the next mission. No progress data is stored on disk. Whilst the inclusion of passwords is welcomed, I would have preferred passwords for every level, not just every fourth level. Of course, there is always an exception to the rule, the exception being the password for the last four levels, which doesn't actually exist....... In other words, you have to battle through eight levels in order to reach the end of the game, rather than being able to start with only four to go. Still, like I say, the last four levels are really simple. The map screen deserves mention because whilst you look at the map, you can still play the game using the (approximately) quarter scale window provided on screen. Of course, since the game is now only drawing into a quarter of the area it draws into with the full screen dispay, the frame rate suddenly shoots up. On an accelerated machine, this increase can result in the game's running just a bit too fast to be really controllable. Nevertheless, it is a nice touch, as you are never left flying blind whilst you consult the map. DOCUMENTATION A 76-page, A5 manual with English, French and German instructions. For a game of this type, beyond a description of the controls and game objective, you don't really need any other documentation. Aside from a bit of background preamble and a list of pictures showing all the friendly/enemy vehicles in the game, there is nothing else in the manual. If it wasn't for the manual based protection, you wouldn't need the manual at all. LIKES In an age of technically superb games, the arrival of Zeewolf with its nice (but nothing special) graphics and audio would seem at first to be rather pointless....... until you play the game. Only then does the sheer playability and addictiveness make itself known. Given the choice of playing Zeewolf or the latest texture mapped, CD quality multi-channel audio, more-processing-power-than-a-Cray type game, I'd probably go for the technically impressive game just to see what it was like, but then I'd return to Zeewolf, and I'd keep returning to it until I'd squeezed every last drop of playability out of it. Don't rely on the looks of Zeewolf to make a buying decision. Either get hold of one of the demo levels floating around on magazine coverdisks (and possibly the networks), or just buy the game. Unless you are someone who totally hates playability, you'll love Zeewolf. DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS Copy protection, Copy Protection and Copy Protection. Oh, and I don't like the copy protection either...... There is a flaw which is annoying and may well result in harm coming to your monitor (as you put your fist through it in anger). To access the in-game map, you hit the Return key. No problem there. To return to the game you hit the Return key again. No problem there............except that most of the time you have to hit the key several times before the game registers it. For some reason this only happens when leaving the map screen; you can always enter the map screen with just a single keypress. At times, when you are about to encounter the enemy, this random delay in returning to the full screen display can be very very annoying, and may result in the loss of a life. Another, less life threatening, flaw is that any enemy forces destroyed are still plotted on the map, so you have to rely on your memory to know whether that red dot just ahead is a smoking pile of twisted metal, or a fully armed SAM launcher. In short, it's always best to be cautious when approaching a target that you can't remember killing before. Finally, on a PAL Amiga, the game screen is opened as a PAL refresh rate screen, but the graphics are all drawn to NTSC resolution (i.e. 200 lines). This would not be a problem if you could use the Early Startup option to run in NTSC mode, but you can't. Zeewolf forces the graphics hardware into its native mode, so you'll only get a full screen display if you have an NTSC Amiga. Note that Binary Asylum have probably been deluged with e-mail telling them about these problems, and I suspect that they'll take all the criticisms into account when they work on their next release. Don't be put off Zeewolf though, it really is worth playing. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS Well, it feels like the offspring of a mating between Zarch and Desert Strike. It has the graphical look and control fun of Zarch, with the shooting and rescues of Desert Strike. If you like either or both games, you'll just drool when you play Zeewolf. BUGS There has been reported a problem with the disk format, in that the initial format was incompatible with some floppy drives. This has now been fixed, but there may still be early versions floating around. If you do have an early version and are encountering loading problems, return the disk to either of the addresses given above, putting "Zeewolf Returns" at the top of the address. VENDOR SUPPORT Unknown. WARRANTY Unknown. CONCLUSIONS First off, I'm not related to, involved in or otherwise linked to Binary Asylum. The fact that I like the game so much is due entirely to its excellence. This is the first game from Binary Asylum, and it's absolutely brilliant! It throws out the notion that rendered graphics and CD audio are required to make a good game, and relies on good old playability to give the game appeal. The only reason you might have for not buying this game is if you are one of those people who refuse to buy non-installable software, but you'd be missing out on a great little game if you are. I can't wait to see their next release....... COPYRIGHT NOTICE Written by and property of: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Chris Coulson | A4000/EC030/882 - 6MB RAM/530MB HD Robotics Postgraduate | A500/000 - 1MB RAM | Sinclair Spectrum - 48KB RAM E-Mail: | Sinclair ZX81 - 1 KB RAM c.j.coulson@ncl.ac.uk | (how times have changed...) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Use the review in any way you like provided you acknowledge the author in some way (68060 cards, RTG boards etc.............;-) --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews