Your Commodore - Commodore Is Awesome

of enemy lighters, its only after playing it for a short while
that the tedium sets in.
The actual scenario for the game is a chain of cylinders,
the inside of which is a complete city. Your job is to destroy
each of 20 cylinders each of which has a specific purpose.
When your ship enters a cylinder a self destruct timer is
initiated. After this timer has run down an escape portal
opens for the enemy to escape through, you must get to this
and follow them through before the ship cylinder blows up.
Actually making it to the portal is, on the first level
anyway, a piece of cake. The enemy fighters aren't
particularly nasty and aren't that quick. However once you
reach the portal things are a little different. Before you can
go through the portal you must de-code the colour lock. Not
an easy task. To decode the lock you must shoot all of the
coloured squares that re the same colour as the top line of the
screen. Oh, and the blocks are moving. After many hours of
playing I must admit that getting through the lock is
extremely difficult it not nearly impossible. I can't help
thinking that the programmers simply added this stage of the
game to make life a little more interesting, after all the first
level is extremely easy. It is extremely irritating to find that
you survived a level only to loose your ship because you can't
get past the lock. I rarely lost a life while battling it out on the
cylinder.
In my view W.A.R. is a game that had a lot of potential
which failed to come through. Summing up best done by
quoting someone who played the game by saying 'it's a 2nd
class Uridium'.
TOUCHLINE Name: W.A.R. Price: £8.95. Machine: C64.
Supplier: Martech, Martech House, Bay Terrace, Pevensey
Bay, East Sussex. BN24 6EE. Tel: (0323) 768456.
Originality: 4/10. Graphics: 8/10. Playability: 6/10. Value:
6/10.
MIAMI VICE
Programs based around TV or film titles are bound to sell on
their titles alone. This is obviously a good thing for the
software houses, but I can't help wondering how the buyers
will feel if the game doesn't live up to their expectations.
Miami Vice, as its name suggests, is based upon that
extremely popular TV series of the same name. Crocket and
Tubbs have heard that a shipment of contraband is due in
town. Your job is to get out on the streets and find the
contraband.
You are supplied with a set of possible meeting places for
the gangsters involved with this caper, together with the
times that the gangsters may be there.
Now appears the first problem. You have a drive around
town and try to reach a meting place where the gangsters
may be, at the correct time of course. Having worked for
quite a while in this town you would have thought that our
heroes would know their way around. Not so, finding the
correct bar is a feat in itself, nevermind getting there at the
correct time. My advice is to spend your first few hours
playing the game making a map. I say hours, as the playing
area is extremely large and it is very difficult to drive around.
Ocean has obviously realised this, since, a few days after
the game arrived, they sent me a map of the city with all of
the bars etc. marked upon it. This was a godsend as I must
admit without it I would have tired of the game extremely
REVIEWS
YOUR COMMODORE november 1986:61
quickly and probably never have got as far as meeting a
criminal.
Driving around the town presents quite a big problem as
there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with the
design of the car. If you were driving down the road with a
car of your left and you wanted to turn right, you would
think that there would be no problems. Wrong, turn your car
to the right and your back end will swing out clonking the
other car and sending you back to the start. If you should
drive close to the edge of the road and try to turn away from
it the same happens. This makes it impossible to turn in
certain circumstances, the only option open to you is to
crash. Now I don't know about you but I've never been in a
car that suffered from this problem.
Once you actually reach your destination, if you ever do,
you have to be very careful of the time. If you arrive too early
the crooks will spot your car and drive off. If you enter a
meeting just as it starts then the crooks will have fled leaving
the evidence behind. If you enter four to eight minutes after a
meeting has started then you may find a crook carrying
evidence. If you enter eight to 12 minutes after a meeting has
started then the location will be deserted, though if you leave
quicky enough you may spot the crooks in their getaway car
and give chase through the streets firing at them out of your
window.
Overall control of the game is quite simple, even if the
actual game play is complicated, though a large number of
options are available from the joystick (shoot, leave car etc.).
The graphics, though not brilliant, in the road scenes are
adequate with a superb smooth scrolling city background
seen from above. The meeting places, bars, are quite well
detailed and searching through the rooms looking for the
crooks and evidence is quite atmospheric.
Fans of the TV series will no doubt turn up their TV's
volume as the familiar TV theme and rock music is played by
the computer, played at a high volume this does add
something to chasing around town looking for crooks.
I can't help thinking that due to the fact that the game
lacks a little in playability it will hold your interest for little
time. Miami Vice suffers from a severe case of 'nice idea,
shame about the game'.
TOUCHLINE Title: Miami Vice. Machine: C64
Supplier: Ocean, Ocean House, 6 Central Street,
Manchester M2 5NS. Tel: 061-832-6633
Originality: 9/10. Graphics: 8/10. Playability: 4/10. Value:
6/10.