Game: Robocop
Console: Amstrad CPC 464
Developer: Ocean
Release Date: 1988
The first of today's four movie linked games for the Amstrad CPC is Robocop. Presented as an on-foot side scrolling shooter, I did begin to wonder just how much of the film the game's designers had seen. The first level requires players to get to the end of the street on the right hand side, past on foot enemies with chainsaws, guns and martial arts skills as well as enemies hanging from windows with more guns.
As the player progresses, there are powerups for health and different types of shot. The normal bullets take two hits to kill enemies, red bullet take one, the triple shot can take out more enemies at a time, and the blue bullets remain a mystery as I wasn't able to get very far into the game. Inbetween the first and second street levels there's a first person style challenge to shoot a hostage taker and save the woman he has taken hostage.
The controls are fairly smooth; moving and shooting feel good and the option to crouch is nice to avoid some enemy shots. A glaring omission from the game however is a jump function, as enemies can also crouch and shoot, leaving players with no means of dodging the attack. Perhaps a punch function would also have been useful to deal with the martial artists.
As far as the level design goes it seems to be fairly boring with similar shop fronts passing by, and a completely straight street to traverse from left to right. Once level two is reached, enemies on motorbikes begin to assault the player also, without any means to dodge them. This makes any further progress very difficult and made me give up on the game after a while.
Graphically the game is nothing special; it's blocky and generally unappealing in both styles of view. There are some items which appear to be in the foreground which players cannot collect, also. The music for the game is pretty enjoyable but its included at the expense of sound effects which gives the overall mood a strange direction.
Overall Robocop is a bland and overly difficult game with control issues, a lack of variety and seemingly little relation to the film. For a game coming out in 1988, that'd have been competing with the NES and Master System, there's little excuse for such design errors.
Rating: 32/100
Grade: E
Game: Ghostbusters II
Console: Amstrad CPC 464
Developer: Activision
Release Date: 1989
Ghostbusters for Amstrad CPC comprises of 3 stages, each of which are I assume from parts of the movie. The first sees players lowering their character down into a sewer, avoiding ghosts and other monsters to reach the bottom unharmed. The second follows the Statue of Liberty down Broadway as they try to reach the museum, where the final stage is held, rescuing Oscar the Baby and defeating Vigo the Carpathian.
The first stage is very difficult to control, the player's momentum doesn't seem to behave as it should, and it's difficult to multitask between watching the courage meter (which drops each time a ghost is touched), collecting parts to get a slime sample at the bottom, and avoiding all of the monsters and ghosts. If players manage to beat this stage, then the second stage is arguably harder; while the controls are a little better and it plays like a space shooter, there's very little margin for error, and the strange slime replenishment system that's used makes it difficult to progress. I didn't manage to play the last stage due to the game's difficulty, but if I had it'd have probably been as hard.
Graphically the game isn't bad, although it's in the typical Amstrad CPC style with rather blocky and blurred sprites when compared to NES graphics. The story cutscenes before each mission are stills from the movie with an orange filter that look honestly horrible. Musically the game does a good job with the movie's theme, and songs inbetween levels, but there's a distinct lack of music to accompany gameplay leaving just the lacklustre sound effects.
Overall Ghostbusters II offers some difficult but passable gameplay across its 3 levels, but it's nothing particularly memorable. While the space shooter style of level 2 is good, it lacks most of the features that make space shooters enjoyable and so falls short of dedicated titles. There's a good amount of variety across the game as a whole, but that's not enough to save it from being far too hard.
Rating: 46/100
Grade: D
Game: Aliens
Console: Amstrad CPC 464
Developer: Electric Dreams
Release Date: 1986
The final movie tie in for this review is Aliens, which is presented as a first person shooter style game. Players can take control of any of the 6 main characters at will, and explore rooms via doors with them. If there's an alien in the current room, a sound will play and players have a short amount of time to kill it before it gets them and kills off one of the 6. Once all 6 main characters have been defeated the game is over.
The aliens come in attack waves, which get stronger as the wave number increases. Alongside this, different types of aliens will appear such as face-huggers and queens. A record of how many aliens of each type have been killed, and the wave number is kept on the pause screen. The controls for the game are fairly simple, with the directional and fire buttons being used as you'd expect, the space bar used to enter doors, and the first letter of each character's surname used to switch to them.
Graphically the game is basic, but the visuals fit well with the overall aesthetic from the movie. While it'd have been nice to see a little more detail in each room (they start to get repetitive after a short time), the limitations of the system were probably to blame. The music featured in the game is enjoyable and gives a sci-fi feel to the action.
Overall while Aliens is a pretty simple title, the gameplay is pretty fun and allows players to re-enact at least the alien killing parts of the film. Exploring rooms can get a little tiresome after a while, especially if all of your characters end up in the same place, or get lost, but this doesn't happen too often. Because of its great soundtrack and generally enjoyable play, Aliens has to be my pick of the movie tie ins in this review.
Rating; 61/100
Grade: D
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