Galactic Conqueror logo

TITUS

At the end of the day, when President Bush leans back in his leather-bound chair and sighs as if he's got the entire world nestling in his toupee. You know it's time for you to take command. He might claim to be striving for world peace but who really gives a damn when Gallion is under attack and it's the foremost duty of the Stellar League to engage in galactic fights just to preserve peace?

GAMEPLAY

The Stellar league was created in order to protect the planet Gallion. You, with your Galactic Fighter Thunder Cloud II, must annihilate the enemies of peace who abound throughout the galaxy. If you accept this mission then you will receive ten million dollars - not that it'll be a lot of use to you since your destruction is inescapable.

The game opens with a map of the galaxy which charts the progress of enemy invasion as the little beggars near Gallion. The intention is to prevent invasion by selecting enemy planets and, um, invading them. Once you've decided on a planet, you're abruptly deposited into the midst of battle. Sounds fun? Having to cope with mines, probe-robots, missiles and meteorites as well as the usual prescribed dose of enemy ships is no small task.

You encounter three different phases of battle - ground, aerial and space fights. The ground fight is the only one not to include enemy ships but no such luck with the other levels. Space-fighting can have you encountering the Imperial Enemy Ship as it goes from planet to planet, delivering the devilish troops. Destroying this awesome creation is almost as difficult as locating a brain-cell somewhere between the editor's earholes (You're fired - Ed). But if you manage to survive you are awarded an extra bonus.

Your ship can be destroyed as often as you like because the game runs until the enemy descends upon Gallion.


GRAPHICS AND SOUND

This isn't just another vertically scrolling shoot-em-up. With everything coming at you in startling 3D you'll soon be wondering whether enemy spacecraft really do look like giant Tarantulas. Fortunately speed isn't sacrificed to accomplish this perspective phenomenon.

An option to double the size of your spaceship is available. If you make the most of this then you don't get to see much of the oncoming space debris until it hits with full force - a bit like Government policies - and the game slows down quite a lot, but considering the size of the sprites hurtled around the screen it's a pretty impressive option.

The sound effects won't have you connecting your Amiga to a hi-fi. With an Arctic wind gusting around the panting galaxy you soon begin to question the health of your Solar System. Blasting offending spacecraft might sound fun but it's accompanied by what sounds like a little man in the computer calmly shouting out 'Pow!' - not an altogether realistic sound-effect!.


CONCLUSION

If you really want to experience total annihilation then this is the one. It's like bombing down a motorway and watching an idiot in a screaming yellow Escort coming tearing round the corner at over a 100mph going the wrong way in your lane - you know you'll be obliterated in the end, it's just a case of how long it'll take and whether it's going to hurt.

If you can survive the psychological strain of becoming a pilot for the Stellar League, and your bank account can handle an injection of $10m then by all means proceed.


Galactic Conqueror logo

Titus
Price: £19.95

Anybody who has played Galaxy Force in the arcades will instantly make a basic comparison between this and the arcade masterpiece, but that I am afraid to says is a basic resemblance. The main ship does look remarkably similar to that of the arcade game, but the backdrops and aliens are stunningly simple, the ground a matter of lines, and the enemy confusing and hard to hit.

The rough plot is that this mega galactic organisation has been assigned to protect the galaxy from any hostile intruders. Everything was going well until... a gang of hostile intruders took it upon themselves to invade. In retaliation to this attack the defence group scrambled their best plane and their best pilot too, in order to rid the galaxy of this nasty alien menace.

On the nice big star map you can choose where you want to start fighting back these rotters, or you can choose a training mission. Quite what the strategic value of this is I do not know, if you are gonna go, you are gonna go.

Flying over the planet's surface you might be forgiven for thinking the place has been flattened by a nuclear explosion, the aliens rush on at you at an extremely slow speed, and there is a lot of them with it making a very confusing scene. And thrown in to make things worse, it is damn difficult to hit the blighters, you need to pull the ship up to get an accurate shot and in doing so you get hit. But once the knack of flying low then jerking up, blasting and ducking has been attained you can zoom through the levels. Scores ranged from one to seven million in what should be a relatively low scoring game.

Bar a digitised snip of music on the intro sequence the rest of the sound is drab, and on many occasions irritating. The main ship graphic is nicely designed and could move very well, but is dampened by the movement of the horizon, which moves in direct relation with the movement of the ship, and looks decidedly odd.

As far as I am concerned, Galactic Conqueror is a complete waste of time, not representing anything other than a pretty useless disc. Another one for the heap.


Galactic Conqueror logo

Titus, Amiga £24.99

Life never seems to want people to live without some problem or other to keep them on their toes. For example, just after the Governments on Earth had managed to find a way to maintain peace, a band of galactic rebels decided that they wanted to rule the galaxy, not just liberate it.

The Government built a large artificial planet at the centre of the galaxy, named Gallion, to monitor and control the spread of the rebel forces through the system. A new type of fighter craft, the Thunder Cloud II, was built to fight the enemy troops - and it needed a special kind of warrior to pilot it. So the winners of the Off-Shore racing competitions were chosen, because of their flair for survival and fast reactions. You are one of these pilots, ready to do battle in your new mega-death-ship. Whoar!

Zzap's Nose: 'Derek Nimo is brill'; Rockford: I was made to pose for this by Maff!

Gordon Houghton Yeah, this is the kind of atmosphere we want from an Amiga game - loads of brilliant technical presentation screens and some ace instructions - just to start off believing in the world you're playing in. As for the game itself - well, it's pretty good 3D blasting fun, but not outstanding, and the whole thing is a bit on the expensive side. Check it out anyway.
Maff Evans Let's face it, Titus' track record when it comes to 3D games isn't exactly wonderful, is it? I thought that Galactic Conqueror was going to be another one of those weedy 3D efforts, but I was wrong. It's not bad at all! The presentation is excellent, the graphics well drawn and the sound effective, all backed up by an extremely playable game. The instructions (despite the spelling) are brilliant, even down to technical data and suggested battle plans. I hope that this heralds a new era of Titus games, as Galactic Conqueror is cracking!