Into battle with a mouse

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WE will dispense the blurb on this one because quite honestly you have heard it all before - the usual stuff about a captured princess and a gallant pilot setting off to face the enemy hordes. Basically you have to dodge things and shoot down the foe.

There are several stages. Firstly the initial pursuit stage in which you must pilot your craft through a wire frame meteor field and shoot down the enemy. If you survive this you must take on a sort of giant slalom run, weaving in between giant monoliths. Not quite sure why you have to do this.

After that it is off to the Quadrilateral Vortex, otherwise known as flying through squares. This is quite difficult because there are obstacles in the tunnel which you do not see before it is too late. Then you must zap a few more baddies.

where Chase really falls down is that you can only play it with the mouse. Becore you buy a mouse-only game there are a few questions you should ask yourself, like "Have I got a really large desk?" and "Would I really like to pilot an expensive spacecraft with a mouse?"

The vector graphics are done quite well, except in the vortex tunnel, where it is difficult to determine whether that thing up ahead is a yellow square or a red square with a yellow square on top of it. A mistake is usually fatal.

Also more thought could have been taken with the choice of colours. The instructions describe the enemy ships as being "a sort of putrid blue colour". It is difficult to argue with them on that point.

This is a budget game. Prices are quite high on standard Amiga software, but at least with games like Falcon you can feel certain that a large proportion of the cost actually went into development and not into high interest bank accounts.



Chase logo

Mastertronic
(£9.99)

This latest Amiga offering from Suede Head Andrew Wright at Mastertronic leaves a lot to be desired. First off it is just too fast to be played easily. All the graphics in the game are vectors, and very well handled they are so fast.

The levels are very Star Warsesque. Level one is an asteroid field, in level two you have to avoid the towers on the planet, whilst in level three you fly down a winding tunnel. Level four - avoid oncoming obstacles in a trench.

Programmed by Mike Sutin (father of The Kristal), Chase is a very poor offering and one we can't really recommend.