Wizard Warz

Your Sinclair

Graphics 2/10

Playability 3/10

Value For Money 4/10

Addictiveness 2/10

Overall 3/10

Ben Stone 3/10

Mike Dunn 3/10

Go! £8.99 Reviewer: Ben Stone, Mike Dunn 'A game that takes fantasy role playing one step further' claims the cover of Go!'s latest offering. What?! Neither of us claim to be role-playing nuts, but we've seen an awful lot better than this! You start off a fresh-faced magician with only a few spells and not much power. Fret not though, spells and other interesting goodies can be picked up easily enough throughout the game. There are plenty of monsters on the first level, who again, don't appear to have done anything wrong but must be blasted if the magic man is to proceed to the next stage. The range in 'ardness from the awfully wimpy Giant Bat to the wickedly bad Vampire. And your object in the first level is to blast the six monsters who guard stolen treasures and then return the treasure to its rightful owner. As a reward the city gives you some food to restore your energy and stamina. The second level is meant to be a test proving your ability to enter the third level. (Not very imaginative, I know, but I suspect that Go!'s writers were having a bad day!) Here you get to choose which monsters to battle with, and killing one gets you a reward. Rewards can be in the form of another spell or a familiar, (that's a cat or crow, you know the sort of thing), and these can be useful for giving you extra powers or making you invulnerable to certain spells. The major reward is a magical item - and you need three of these to go on to level three. Assuming you survive this arduous task (it isn't the game's difficulty that's the problem it's being able to breathe in the atmosphere of boredom it creates!) then we can stomp (and what a poorly animated stomp it is too), into level three , where you've got to destroy the seven Wizards and their guardian monsters in order of difficulty. If after tackling one of these truly 'ard guys you don't have enough energy to go on, you are awarded some more - what fun! You may have gathered that we're not too keen on Wizard Warz. That's putting it mildly: it's rubbish! Strategy games are fine when they do involve strategy, but this relies far too much on 'arcade type action' which simply isn't fast enough to handle enjoyably. The graphics are very poor indeed - the playing area involves character scrolling which shouldn't have emerged from the dark ages. At full Go! price Wizard Warz is nothing short of a rip-off. It has to be one of the least fun pieces of programming we've had the misfortune to play in months.

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years

Crash

Presentation 70%

Graphics 68%

Playability 72%

Addictive Qualities 70%

Overall 70%

Mike Dunn 40%

Nick Roberts 74%

Phil King 74%

Producer: Go!/Capcom Retail Price: £8.99 cassette, £12.95 disk Author: G Bolton, P Houbart, D Drake and D Worton Chief Wizard is an accolade that can only be earned by the best. Taking the part of a junior wizard, the player embarks on a quest to defeat mysterious beasts and seven evil wizards in an attempt to gain the coveted title. The first of three levels sees the young novice travelling between seven cities and six monsters. The player's movements are depicted on a scrolling map in the centre portion of the screen. The first time the player passes through a town he is given one food ration. As he is spotted, an enemy's image appears on the screen, and battle commences. Each combatant is given the chance to select a spell. Once defeated, a monster yields one of six treasures. Returning this to the appropriate town adds a further two rations to the wizard's stock. With all six treasures safely delivered, the wizard moves on to the second stage. A test of the player's power locks him in battle against a series of monsters. In the process he fills his book with powerful spells and, once successful moves onto the third and final round. COMMENTS Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston Graphics: miniscule play area, but detailed and colourful display Sound: title tune only

Wizard Warz: an acquired taste.

Sinclair User

Graphics 77%

Sound 60%

Playability 78%

Lastability 80%

Overall 77%

Chris Jenkins 77%

Label: Go! Author: Canvas Software Price: £8.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Chris Jenkins If you like computerised versions of Dungeons and Dragons, you normally have to put up with pathetic graphics showing piddly little matchstick men going, "ecky-ecky-ecky" in featureless boxes meant to represent amazing pixie treasure chambers. There are so many games of this kind around that I seriously think D&Dists actually LIKE pathetic graphics. Fortunately, you now have a choice. You can be a weedy wet and stick with the matchstick men; or you can get Wizard Warz and enjoy an altogether more visual experience. Wizard Warz casts you as a junior sorcerer with big ambitions. The game is in three parts. First, find the treasure, defeat guardian monsters and claim your reward. Second, slay a selection of demons. Third, defeat the 7 wizards and take your place as the Big Boss. The playing screen is divided into 8 main sections. Starting top left, you have your spell book. There are around 30 spells from which to choose; as you gain more power, you can add more spells to your book. The abilities of each spell are explained in the manual, so selecting the best ones for the current quest is a major part of the game. Below the spell book appears your own image, which changes according to your state of health. Below this are the 3 bar charts which show your physical, spiritual and metal state. You can exchange points between these attributes, and boost them by performing certain quests, eating food and so on. In the middle of the screen is the main playing area. This is a large scrolling landscape through which you move in search of cities, treasures and monsters. When you encounter a monster, this changes to a combat screen where you must cast your magical spells in an attempt to slay each opponent. Below the main display is your inventory, which shows your food supplies, treasures which must be returned to the cities and so forth. On the right of the screen appear your opponents' spell books, images and attributes. Sound effects are minimal, after the admittedly decent theme tune. Apart from the fact that the controls gave me no end of gyp - select Interface 2, and you get Keyboard control, then the Fire key doesn't work, and all kinds of hassle - Wizard Warz is good fun, and much better looking than many similar attempts to do a D&D. The big problem, which it has in common with previous titles, is that there are long periods of wandering around with nothing happening; I suppose you could argue that it captures the boredom of being a junior wizard wandering around without knowing where one's next quest is coming from. But even so it's still dull as ditch water in this section. Still and all, I'd rather see a system which guarantees continuous action.