Panzer Attack

Crash

Angus Ryall

FRONTLINES From our correspondent at the front Angus Ryall. When I was younger, working on various college Rag Mags and stuff, I had this peculiar idea that being a megastar journalist would change my life. In fact, all that happened was that I end up sitting up all night for about three days in a row, roughly two weeks after the final copy date has passed, madly trying to get everything together in time. I have a sneaking feeling that all part-time writers work this way; certainly I used to know some people who wrote for the music press, and they claimed that they simply could not write at all until after the copy date. Funnily enough, the soon-to-be-deceased/late lamented Big K magazine was staffed by a lot of ex-NME people, which tells you quite a lot about why it was like it was, and also why it no longer is. What the intuitive among you will have realised is that I am working my way round to apologising for the apalling errors I have made in recent issues, like abusing the wrong people, getting my opinions wrong, etc. I must say, actually, I had the good fortune to meet John Gilbert last week at the Toy Fair, and I'm sure if it hadn't been for the fact that we were giving away free wine on our stand, he would certainly have explained to me the exact nature of his identity crisis. A splendid chap. The point is, though, that we journalists are under an immense amount of pressure, and can't avoid making the odd slip, and there's really no cause for any offence to be taken. Anyway.... I'm back again, and just about suitably psyched up to deliver another vituperative harangue. In case you didn't realise I missed last month's copy date yet again (this is getting boring) but it wasn't my fault Your Honour, there were mitigating circumstances! You see, my fiancé and I live in a (how shall we put this?) derelict house, which we actually own (fools!) and intend to renovate, flog and make a hefty profit on. Unfortunately, there are some slight drawbacks to living in this salubrious joint, like the fact that when it snows it actually comes right down the chimney into the living room - and of course going to the loo becomes a major Arctic expedition. Once you've got the huskies hitched up, you have to negotiate a ten-foot high mountain of bricks in the backyard. The loo itself is frozen up, and sitting on it is something else - it leaves your posterior feeling like it's been ravaged by a rampant squid. In an effort to ease the tribulation of living in this hardship station, I have taken to using a potty indoors at night... I don't think I can go on with this - it gets really disgusting! As I had ten days off from my day job over Christmas, I thought I would really get stuck in to a number of desperate jobs, like putting some heating and hot water in, and so on. And now, in fact, our standard of living has increased by about 300%. We no longer have to trek over to the other side of town to wash at my mum's, and we've got a nice stereo. The thing is, though, that I just didn't get time to look at any games, let alone write about any. (This is not quite true, I did spend a little time playing Knight Lore, and I have to say 'Well done, all you lot at Ashby'). I think I'll just resign now, OK? Also, I will admit to playing Dark Star a bit, and I have a great tip for anyone with a joystick: easily the best way to play Darkstar is to define all the right-hand keys at accelerate, all the left-hand keys as brake, stick the Speccy on the floor, take your shoes off and use it like the pedals in a car. This enables you to keep both hands on your joystick all the time (after a while I found that I could even hit the '1' button pretty accurately with my toe). The only drawback is that it can get a bit smelly, and your friends tend to regard you as some kind of pervert. Just before Christmas I had the time of my day at the EMAP Christmas party at the Camden Palace. To those of you who don't know, EMAP is a big publishing company, which owns loads of magazines, such as C-5 User and C&VG. In view of my oft-expressed pleas for more friendly relations between magazine people, I was not at all surprised to get the call to Camden Town (funny Roger couldn't make it - had a bad attack of the belly ache, I hear) and headed off down the central line confidently expecting the usual gutful of gin. But - horror of horrors! - the free bar closed at nine o'clock, well before I'd hit my stride. In that time, though, I had managed to have a very meaningful 18-second conversation with Lee Guinty of Micro Dealer (Lee is a person of immense power, because he has a large say in how many games a Software Company is going to sell. He stands me up at lunch dates, but OK, I can take the humiliation)(sob). I'd also had a long chat with Clive Bailey of Beyond about how brilliantly they've been doing lately and, I can now reveal to you, in a sneak leak, that Beyond will shortly be launching a new label! Like, wow! You may have noticed from previous reports that I like going to exhibitions and things. Well, I think I've changed my mind. I've just spent the last five days at the Earls Court Toy Fair, an event which must surely rival even the dreadful ideal Home Exhibition for sheer tedium. Funnily enough, there were virtually no software companies there at all, although there were plenty of people looking for them - perhaps this explains why I was hardly bought any drinks at all during the entire show. Or maybe it was just the fascist car-park attendants, scaring them away. Who can tell? I'd also just like to say hello to the person who congratulated me on my column (wash your brain out with soap, you degenerate) - it almost makes it all worthwhile, although the odd beer would help as well. Incidentally, I had the most apalling experience with microdrives at the show - one day we had a press reception in the morning for all the hacks to see our new games. Guess what happened - all three cartridges with the new games on had mysteriously de-formatted themselves, and so I had absolutely nothing to show the assembled throng. I felt a right dingbat, and the moral is clear - if you have to rely on microdrives, then don't use them at all. PANZER ATTACK Producer: Lothlorien Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £6.95 Author: R. Packer & T. Kitchener I've not had many kind words to say about Lothlorien in the past, so I would not have minded being able to say something nice about them now. Sadly, I can't. This is a game based on the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 - you have to prevent the Germans from capturing your fuel dumps, and thus moving on to capture Antwerp. The game kicks off with twelve text screens of how to play the game, what really happened, etc. The map that comes up is a 'true' geographical representation of the Ardennes; in the usual wargame fashion it operates not with cursor, but with map references to define objective points. I wish people would stop using these map reference things - they are imprecise, hard on the eyes, and generally make games look old-fashioned and cruddy, like Battleships or something. Having said that, the map in Panzer Attack is definitely better than their usual standard: but it's still next to impossible to see what is going on. There are some nice touches in the game, the fact that the intelligence that you receive is not always correct; but there are also some horrible touches, such as the way the reports come up going beep beep bip bip beep like Morse Code. To sum up, Panzer Attack gave me a headache, but then since I've been demonstrating computer games non-stop for a week, it's not at all surprising.

Micro Adventurer

Noel Williams

MICRO: Spectrum 48K PRICE: £5.95 FORMAT: Cassette SUPPLIER: MC Lothlorien, [redacted] Now to a home grown product, M.C. Lothlorien's Panzer Attack for the Spectrum. This is another game that you could just about reproduce using the Combat Leader system, if you stretch your imagination slightly. Its main difference is that it represents the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes in 1944, a slight increase of scale over that of Combat Leader. As the Allies your task is to prevent the Germans from overrunning Antwerp. As you can define the German victory conditions there are degrees of difficulty to the game in a manner roughly equivalent to Legionnaire. But there is little else you can do to alter the scenario and, though it is a hard game to win, it nevertheless palls rather rapidly. The map is only Spectrum screen size for a start. In these days of scrolling screens and multi-screen arcade adventures you would expect the design philosophy to have been adopted for the kind of game which has always cried out for large and variable display, the wargame. As the Allied units and the German units always start from roughly the same positions (the Germans do vary their starting strategy somewhat) and the objectives of fuel dumps and Antwerp also remain in, the same place, the battle generally develops along the lines of its historical prototype with the Germans trying to race through the centre and the Allies flinging in division after division. Both armies are prone to run out of fuel, but the Allies cannot use their own fuel dumps! This is a laudable game from Lothlorien, especially considering some of their earlier efforts, but it falls into the trap well known to boardgame and tabletop wargamers of sticking too rigidly to the historical scenario. Whilst it is certainly true that the point of a wargame is accurately to represent a particular historical conflict it is also true that a game which is always the same as that conflict will be pretty boring. Wargaming is much more interesting when it covers the 'what if?'s of history what if it had not rained the night before Waterloo, what if Washington had not crossed the Delaware, what if Richard III had not fallen off his horse and so on. Control in Panzer Attack is similar to Combat Leader. Press a number for the army to receive orders. Press another key to give the order. As with all real time games, player panic results from inefficiency in the control system. So Panzer Leader's slowness in responding to orders is extremely frustrating. The Spectrum 48K has a notoriously poor keyboard (or at least for those of us saddled with last year's technology) but Lothlorien seem to poll the keyboard very infrequently so you sometimes have to press a key four or five times before getting a response. The copy I had to review was an early version, and Lothlorien has apparently tightened up the game. Even with the faults, it is quite a good little game. I enjoyed playing it despite the problems, but then I didn't have to pay for it. If you are desperate for an Ardennes simulation and you only want the standard historical scenario you can probably put up with the disappointing control system. Lothlorien, and other British companies, really should be working along the lines of Combat Leader for the Spectrum. It is about time our home grown machines had wargames software to match them. Software houses complain that the market is too small to justify the Research and Development, but (as the Lords of Midnight series shows) good R and D can create its own market and a wargame of the standard of. Combat Leader for the Spectrum will sell well.