The Waster

Big K

Graphics 0/3

Playability 2/3

Addictiveness 2/3

Overall 2/3

Steve Keaton 2/3

MAKER: Hard Data FORMAT: cassette PRICE: £5.95 You toss and turn in your bed. Images flash by. You recall being spat on and shot at in Iraq. The regular beatings and torture in a Cambodian jail... So begins this novel text adventure that manages to impress depite the shoddy DIY packaging. You play a C.I.A. assassin, known to his colleagues as The Waster, an ex-Vietnam vet not generally regarded for his sense of humour. The program comes in two parts. The first involves a nightmare journey through The Waster's troubled psyche, in which he relives slabs of Nam and New York life, and the second which details his latest hit. It's an effective design play by author Steven Pear. Plagued by a turbulent past, you must first conquer your own fevered imagination before embarking on the final sanction. The two parts can only be played in sequence. (The text is similarly dramatic. 'Bullets snap past you like taut steel whips' is a typical line.) Such sparkle more than compensates for the occasional spelling gaff. A shame then that the game is rather spoilt by single command input routine. It won't recognise anything other than the ten preset options (eg., 'T' for Take, 'E' for eat). This kind of set menu is hardly conducive to a good mental romp.

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Simon Marsh

What a title. Pity about the game! The Waster is a new Adventure from Harddata who package it with a poor quality inlay. I hope this will be reflected in the price. The game puts you in the role of a CIA agent, code-named Waster. You are the CIA's top assassin and, because of this dubious honour, you are about to be sent on a mission to Africa to kill a right-wing dictator. The night before setting out on this mission, you dream about your wife, the Vietnam war and many other things that CIA agents supposedly dream about! In fact, the first part of the Adventure is to escape from your nightmares so that you con get to Africa to kill Pasoa, the dictator. The second part takes place in his palace where you must kill him. The game is very slow to respond and even more annoying is the fact that it has a minute vocabulary and that the locations are random. The vocabulary consists of ten single-letter commands which is an indication that the game lacks depth and imagination. After all, how can you try different ways to kill a guard, for example, if the only killing commands is A for Attack? The game loads in two parts - first the nightmare scene and then the assassination scene, giving the buyer over 80k of Adventure. But with an Adventure as poor as this, it hardly matters how much memory it takes up. As the saying goes, quality not quantity is what counts. Sorry to say it, but this is the worst so-called Adventure I have ever seen! The Waster is from Harddata for the 48k Spectrum.