Hoi logo

HOLLYWARE * £25.99

This was written by three young Belgians (the ones who wrote the music package Mugician reviewed in Amiga Format 19) and it has taken them a lot of effort to get it in to the marketplace.

And their time hasn't been wasted, because as platform games go Hoi has all the right ingredients: an undeniably cute hero, bright copper backgrounds and very smooth scrolling. But somehow it just fails to produce the addictively playable game it should.

There is a bit of the 'play till you get killed and the start again and remember what to avoid' syndrome to the game. Sometimes you are forced to take a jump into the unknown because the screen doesn't extend far enough for you to see where you're going. The design of the levels is simply not intelligent enough for this to be a truly enjoyable game.

The first level is the worst, if you can make it to subsequent levels, then you may find yourself enjoying Hoi.



Hoi logo

Um in diesen Tagen ehrliche Käufer auf die Plattformen zu locken, genügen zuckersüße Grafik und herzallerliebster Sound allein nicht mehr - das Angebot ist einfach zu groß. Ob das die Jungs von Hollyware wohl wußten?

Nein, sie wußten es nicht: Hoi macht zwar rein äußerlich einen sehr schönen Eindruck, und auch die Vorgeschichte um einen putzigen Dino, der seine Liebste aus der Einsamkeit erretten soll, ist nett - spielerisch herrscht aber dennoch ein akuter Mangel an frischen Ideen.

In den insgesamt fünf Leveln trifft unser "Putzosaurier" auf ewiggleiche Gegner (Bienen, Mäuse etc.) in ewiggleichen Formationen; von Extrawaffen darf man sich auch keine Abwechslung erwarten, weil es hier keine Waffen gibt.

Hoi muß seinen Feinden also geschickt ausweichen, und das gerät oft genug zur Glückssache: Die Landschaften scrollen zwar multidirektional, aber halt erst, wenn der Held fast den Bildschirmrand erreicht hat - in solchen Momenten kann man auf heranschwirrende Gegner meist nicht mehr rechtzeitig reagieren, außerdem wird man somit häufig zu "Blindsprüngen" genötigt.

Und wer erst mal ein Leben ohne Eigenverschulden verloren hat und weiter hinten neu anfangen muß, ärgert sich völlig zu Recht!

Dieser Ärger überschattet natürlich die Freude an den Puzzle-Elementen, Sammeldiamanten, Bonusfrüchten und Geheimräumen; auch der Spaß an der bunten Bonbongrafik und schönen Begleitmusik wird einem auf Dauer verleidet. No Sir, für 80 Mäuse hat Hoi einfach zuwenig Gutes und Neues zu bieten, selbst wenn man den "Stroboscopic Effect" mitrechnet, den die (englische) Anleitung für den Schlußlevel verspricht. (rl)



Hoi logo

No, I don't know what it means either. But I do know that I worry when I'm given nine lives to play with. And look, that's how many Hoi offers.
I'm worried. More lives means more trouble. It means the author is compensating for this poor, unnecessarily frustrating design. There's plenty of that in Hoi.

Hoi is in fact the name of a dinosaur who's on a quest through the five levels of Madlands to find his true love. Fine. The first level's a 'country' scene and the second's full of machines.

In the third level Hoi wears a jetpack and shoots a gun, while on level four there's an underwater section and a funny jumping buggy to drive. The fifth and final level carries a warning that its wacky stroboscopic effects could trigger epileptic seizures.

Hoi can walk, jump and climb ladders - a limited range of potentially flexible skills in this case are sluggish to enact on screen and not used to the full. Using his talents, Hoi avoids monsters, some of them flying, some of them exploding, and some of them homing in on the dotty dino - nothing new or spectacular there.

Hoi collects bonus points, time bombs and air tanks, and throws switches to open and close barriers. He dodges spikes, slides along some blocks and uses moving platforms and teleporters. Oh, and there are a few hidden bonus sections to play, too.

Hoi can't touch anything animate, which is fair enough, but he also can't fall any great distance without dying, and that sticks in my craw. The collision detection between Hoi and the big, bold, colourful and boring scenery and characters is poor.

And while I'm moaning, I should mention the poor disk management which only serves to highlight the insufficient visual, aural and playable rewards for the time you are left waiting.

Hoi is the sort of frustratingly playable junk I'd expect to see as part of the Shareware scene or at worst at a budget price. But I like it. This simple stuff appeals to my mentally-challenged nature, more so because it has 'SPANKY' as a high-score entry, and that's funny, see.