S.C.I.O.N

Break Space

Dave Sloane

Mpk

S.C.I.O.N. Sausageware £2 digital / £15 physical Sloany's Review Tom Potter of Sausageware Games seems to be the type of creative who does things differently. That's why when he had the idea to make a colourful maze game using MPAGD, instead of making a flick screen game like the engine was designed for, he opted to push the envelope. Maybe that should be "push scroll" the envelope, as he's gone and created a four-way scrolling environment to explore for Sausageware's sophomore hit, S.C.I.O.N. S.C.I.O.N. (or Special Covert Infiltration Operations Network to its friends) sees you take on the role of a member of a crack squad, hand-picked to take down an evil crime syndicate known as The Morticians. Your mission begins on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean, where your first task is to battle your way through the terrain & some unfriendly locals to attempt to uncover the secret base. Once you've tailored your controls and chosen from one of the two difficulty modes, you're thrust right into the midst of a great run and gun action adventure. You start off equipped with a standard gun, limited bullets & a handful of smart bombs, but there are numerous pickups you can acquire on your travels including shields, smart bombs bullets and health. These goodies are parachuted in during the levels. Between levels there's also a clever shop system to buy extras, using coins dropped by your downed enemies. Each level has a decent sized map to explore, with different coloured keys to find that enable you to unlock new areas. There's a bit of backtracking to be done at times, with some dead ends to contend with. Having a good sense of direction and those map making skills you picked up from the Speccy's heyday will come in very handy here. Your cute main character can move & fire in 8 directions, which becomes essential in seeing off the nasties you encounter The scrolling does take a bit of getting used to, but it certainly adds an extra dimension, as well as being an extremely impressive technical feat. I'm extremely impressed with how much game is squeezed into a single load. There's even a 48K version, on which the only compromise I can find is the sound. Overall, the game is extremely polished. The graphics are vibrant and well defined and the soundtrack on the 128K version is great too. Rumour has it that Tom's next plans to bend MPAGD to his will involve making a brand new Speccy dungeon crawler. I for one can't wait to see how that turns out.

Captive-ating

Someone set us up the bomb!