Mutants

Sinclair User

Overall 6/10

Graham Taylor 6/10

Label: Ocean Author: Choice Software Price: £7.95 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Graham Taylor An odd one this. Odd to play. Odd design history (Denton Designs thought up the idea but Choice Software programmed it) and odd concept. You blow away mutant germs with the good ship Rainbow Warrior. The germs are the result of weapons research by warmongering bad guys. The Greenpeace connections are obviously intentional which must make this about the most right-on game plot ever. Like many Denton Designs game ideas this is a weird one. It is a good twenty minutes or so, even after reading the instructions, before you get the faintest idea what's going on. In fact the closest comparisons I can think of for the game are all by Jeff Minter - well known creator of bizarre plots. After much reading and re-reading of the instructions I figured out it works like this: you select a region to enter, in each region is a germ species and an object you need to collect. If you get all the objects from 15 quadrants you can then take them to yet another section which is a sort of maze affair - somewhere in the middle of it is a sort of assembly plant where all the objects are assembled and you get to enter the next bit. Getting each bit of the object means getting past the germs. This requires a bit of dexterous joystick juggling and the correct selection of weapon. There are three to choose from - laser-type things, bomb-type things and space mines. The problem is with some of the germs you have to choose the right weapon or... well you're going to look pretty silly and not save the federation. The actual germ attack bits are the key to the game. Making the aliens an 'abstract' concept like germs means you can get away with all kinds of pleasing graphic effects and weird technical stuff. Some of the germs look like the night sky over Eastbourne, others look like comets and some look like second-rate laser shows. (Actually all of them look like out-takes from Colourspace, possibly Jeff Minter's most psychedelic game ever.) Some germs sort of explode at you, others weave web-like patterns around you, some just sort of run at you. The end result is usually death. You can teleport between regions at will simply by finding the landing pad - so if you choose the wrong weapon - and haven't died yet, you can have another try. It all looks quite nice - the germs are quite entertaining in a cosmic sort of way and there are icon-select systems all over the place. The snag is actually the game doesn't hold the interest for long. There is more to addictiveness than pretty patterns, but pretty patterns are all you'll find here.

Crash

Presentation 76%

Graphics 79%

Playability 60%

Addictive Qualities 54%

Overall 58%

Mark Rothwell

Mike Dunn

Robin Candy

Producer: Ocean Retail Price: £7.95 Author: Choice Software From the turmoil of interstellar war springs a splinter group which plans to destroy the ultimate weapon system - Macrogenetic Mutoids, known as Mutants. The Mutants are contained in 15 test zones, which can be destroyed if the self-destruct components in each zone are collected and assembled in the 16th, the control zone. (When that's done you go on to the next level.) You teleport to a test pen in Rainbow Warrior, a small one-man patrol ship. Each pen is surrounded by an energised surround which can destroy shipsm and guarded by Mutants which can destroy one of the ship's three lives. The Mutants can be taken out using the ship's three weapons systems - slow, but big blasting missiles, rapid-fire low-level photon torpedoes, and barriers that provide a temporary shield. Only one system can be used at a time. Components of the self-destruct device must be picked up and carried by teleporter out of the test zone and into the control zone. There you must find a way through its deadly walled corridors to the assembly point, where components can be deposited, the mechanism constructed and the universe saved as usual. FACT: to Greenpeace environmentalists' ship sunk in New Zealand by French agents in 1985 was the ... Rainbow Warrior. Shome coinshidenshe shurely? COMMENTS Control keys: redefinable and preset (Q/A up/down, O/P left/right SPACE to fire) Joystick: Kempston, Interface II Use of colour: well used throughout Graphics: very attractive Sound: little except for a few sparse spot FX Skill levels: one Screens: constantly scrolling

One of the game screens in Mutants - you're into the galactic dump where you deposit collected objects.

The attractive main option screen from Mutants; from the icnons you select fire power (top three) and start play (lower icon).

Your Sinclair

Graphics 6/10

Playability 5/10

Value For Money 7/10

Addictiveness 5/10

Overall 6/10

Rachael Smith 6/10

Ocean £7.95 Reviewer: Rachael Smith I've been out with some pretty weird types in my time but none so totally mutant as this collection of blobs, lines and what looks like animated dandruff. Throw in a handful of icons and what've you got? The newie from Denton Designs, that's what. Or rather, that's not what because this is a conversion from the C64 and I have my suspicions that it lost out somewhere along the way. Either that or Denton has totally lost its once almighty touch. It's a shoot 'em up combined with a minimum amount of strategy. Part one takes place a four by four grid where you try to collect fifteen parts of a self-destruct mechanism, which are reassembled in the sixteenth zone, at the top left hand corner. Each of the zones is a sort of inter-stellar field, bounded by an electrified fence, but their content is far more deadly than cowpats. The mutant strains that inhabit the fields are lively little things, always running about (perhaps that's how they strained themselves) and making your life a misery. There's only one type of weapon to deal with each strain - see. I said there was an element of strategy - and you can only kit up at the mother ship, between zones. If you don't get the right one I'd suggest you make like a parasite and flee. The control zone takes the shape of a maze, and once again you have to be careful not to collide with its walls as you search for the re-assembly point. As it isn't free of nasties, which probably escaped from an ancient Pac-Man program, you'd do well to wait until you've collected enough bits to make the risk worthwhile. An all-right sort of game, you might think. Well, it could be if not for the fact that it shows all the signs of a hasty conversion. Your ship's reactions are poor and its movement is sluggish. Collision detection appears to be erratic. ( We'll have none of that! Ed). I said erratic, not erotic, cloth-ears - particularly in the maze. It also suffers from my least favourite game-feature ever - the instant death syndrome, which doesn't give you time to escape - and on the loss of your final life there's an immediate Game Over message with singular lack of finesse. Add to that the absence of music and all but the most primitive effects and there's little to make you want to continue playing. In fact the game is so badly balanced that I didn't reach the second level, where you take on the mutant colony, and about which the instructions are strangely vague. It may be that this half is one of the all-time classic computer games... but unless the programmers mutated along the way, somehow I doubt it.

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years