Mission Venom

Your Sinclair

Technical Ingenuity 84%

Achievement 70%

Crap Factor 14%

Fun 62%

Overall 65%

Rich Pelley 65%

CRAP GAME CORNER In case your were wondering where RICH PELLEY and Crap Games Corner have got to this issue, they're both here. MISSION VENOM By Nigel Woods Hmm- this one seems familiar. Excuse me a minute (wanders off to check the dusty archives of YS shed). A-ha! Here we are, C**** November 1989 (ahem) and a game on the covertape called Action Farce II, which is rather spookily similar to this one. Now this opens up two possibilities - a) this Nigel Woods bloke wrote both the crap game and the one on the C**** tape or b) the whole thing is just a coincidence. The answer, though, is of course c) he completely ripped off Action Farce II and hoped I wouldn't notice, the cheat. What a complete scamp, eh, readers? Anyway, for what it's worth, the basic idea of Mission Venom is to get from one end of the flip-screen maze to the other in a little tank, picking up objects and using them at the appropriate places to progress further (via pull-down window menus, as seen in both Mastertronic's Magic Knight series, and the screenshot here), and jumping over nasty gaps and avoiding deadly objects into the bargain. There's a strong puzzle element to the thing as you have to decide what objects to use where - but because hints are given to you at the top of the screen (and it's all pretty obvious anyway) it's really a bit too easy. So easy in fact that my friend finished it on his first ever go. As a game on the whole, it works quite well, but both this and Mission Venom 2 (more of the same thing on the other side of the tape) are really only cut-down versions of this Farce II thing, with different puzzles and layout, but similar graphics, and identical gameplay. They're far far (far) to easy as well. So, not a bad effort all in all, but hardly a fair one.

A couple of big columns. Oo-er.

ED'S NOTE Although this is rather unlike us, we would like to be extremely serious for a moment as we have some rather upsetting news. It's Rich Pelley, you see. He's dead. A fatal overdose of Nice 'n' Spicy Nik-Naks apparently (6 packets - a new world record). We found this suicide note nearby... "Dear Readers, I just can't go on. These crap games are driving me mad as I feel that they really are becoming too stupidly crap and the whole feature too pointless to carry on. Okay, so it was a pretty funny joke to begin with, but you've got to admit, it's all getting a bit boring and unfunny now. I've therefore decided to kill myself. Bye then. Rich. PS. However, we will be sticking any decent games we receive on the covertapes (and doing the occasional Good Game Corner), so do continue sending these in, won't you? But remember - no crap ones. Not even one, as these will just get slung out immediately. Cheers then." Blimey, eh? THE END