Yogi Bear & Friends: The Greed Monster

Crash

Overall 69%

Nick Roberts 69%

Hi-Tec Software £2.99 Yogi's back and he's brought a few friends along with him this time. They've all received a call from Top Cat about how the toys of the world have been stolen and set out to find them. Unfortunately, being dim cartoon characters, they've gone and got captured by the evil Greed Monster! You, as the boisterous bear, now have to find all the toys and rescue your pals from a late worse than death - the eraser! Oh not! Not the dreaded... (Shut up! -Ed). The first thing you think when playing this is... Top Cat! The game is basically exactly the same as TC with more of the well drawn and coloured graphics and a variety of nastiness to be avoided. Instead of collecting milk to restore your energy you now munch picnic baskets, and items like keys, sweet jars, honey and cans of pop can all be used to your advantage. YBAFITGM (for short!) is instantly appealling to the younger gamesplayer. The cartoon characters are all recognisable and the simple gameplay is not difficult to master. If you find getting around the aliens in the semi-3D environment a bit hard then fret not! Yogi has been armed with sweets. Firing one at a nasty will soon solve your problem. Yogi's latest adventure may not be anything new but I found it great fun to play and quite addictive. I recommend it to all our younger readers: the game gets a little repetitive after a while but you'll still have some good fun.

Your Sinclair

Overall 47%

Jon Pillar 47%

RICH PELLEY and JON PILLAR - as nice of couple of young chaps as you could ever hope to meet. So we locked them up in the... BARGAIN BASEMENT YOGI BEAR AND FRIENDS IN THE GREED MONSTER Hi-Tec £2.99 Reviewer: Jon Pillar Despite the questionable biological implications of the title, this is a squeaky-clean collect-'em-up maze game. Trapped on the Greed Monster's island, you (as Yogi) must find 20 hidden coins, free all five of your kidnapped pals, uncover keys to open doors, and eventually track down the Greed Monster and pilfer his treasure. (That is, I think that's what you have to do - I haven't got any instructions, you see.) The baddies out to stop you follow set routes (instead of homing in on you) so some nifty footwork should see you through if you run out of ammo (ie stripey toffees). Collectable goodies give you extra toffees, energy, invulnerability etc and with the bright, flat colours and cute little characters it's like a twee entry in the Atic Atac genre. But, alas, it's a bit of a disaster. Since the baddies don't attack you unless you get in their way you're left trundling about without any real sense of danger - the pace seems sedate going on sedative. The Explorer's Itch gets pretty quickly scratched, and overall the gameplay is as soggy as a papier-mache hat worn by an Amazonian in the rainy season.- Full marks to Hi-Tec for signing up some original licences, but minus several million for just pasting the characters onto soulless and repetitive games like this one. And out the window it goes.

A-ha! A banana skin! (I think.) Better be jolly careful not to slip on it, eh?