Publisher:- Zentek | Price:- ????? |
Programming:- Zentek | Release Date:- OUT NOW |
DESCRIPTION:
"Nemac IV: The Director's Cut" is a
First-Person-Perspective-Texture-Mapped-Action-Adventure-Game (a.k.a)
a
Doom-clone by Zentek.
It's minimum requirements:
THE TEST MACHINES:
A3000
FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
Well, installation is a breeze with the standard Amiga installer. It
checks your Amiga's configuration (CPU, Memory, OS
version, etc)
before giving you the green light. I must admit, it's a nice
touch.
I'd hate going through the whole installation just to find out I
haven't enough ram, proper OS version or an inadequate CPU.
The first thing that greats you when you actually
start the game is the game-configuration menu. It's an intuition window
that has a built-in screen requester, and various other nick-nacks like
Chunky2Planar routine selector, controls config, close Workbench switch...
However, you can't set your pixel sizes (1x1, 1x2 or 2x2) or your
play-area size (full-screen or fraction) from here though. You have to
be in the game to do it.
AND NOW THE FUN BEGINS:
After
the configuration window comes the title-sequence. The cut-scenes in thi
game contains some nice computer generated animation. You can tell that
a lot of work had gone into it but, as polished as it is, it's not very
exciting to watch.
The actual playback is more or less silky smooth
on a true SCSI-II controller (like the A3000's), but gets pixelated if
attempts are made in increasing the screen size higher to quarter-screen.
(The Ferret starts to choke and shows animations in little bursts, but
I can't necessarily blame the programmer's on this though.) There
is an option to choose a "higher" mode in the installation, but
all attempts at using it on either one of my systems seems to yeel the
same results.
Anyway, after starting an actual game, you get a
nice view of your cockpit, with your guns at either side, and other information
such as your various ammo levels and health.
There are a few nice touches like textured floors and ceilings (which can
be toggled on and off), the "up-down" motion of walking with
your guns bobbing accordingly, the fireing of different weapons will cause
different parts of your pistols to be animated.
Other then that, there doesn't seem to be any special
graphical effects in this game at all (lighting or otherwise). Another
thing you might notice is that everything is mechanical.
You are fighting against robots. Now fighting robots isn't so bad, but
its all done so clinically. These robots get shot, they might flash and
then "tumble" on their backs. If the robots were to say, truly
explode like the soldiers in Gloom Deluxe, or maybe crumble into tiny particles,
it might be more exciting and rewarding to watch.
However, maybe this uneventful destruction might
be due to the weapons. You start the game with 4 of them: Chain Guns,
Plasma Guns, Grenades and Bombs. Strangely enough, none of them really
give you a feeling of power. There doesn't seem to be any upgrades to these
either, which limits the character's ability to evolve. Even grenades,
the strongest projectile, isn't really spectacular. Instead of an
typical small "explosion cloud", maybe it should be a bright
explosion that blinds the player? (The player throws one, the screen goes
white, and when vision comes back the player is surronded by destroyed
ennemies. Now that's power!) Oh yes, there you may also use
those exploding barrels for additional fire-power (ho-hum).
To make matters worse, your mission objectives aren't
really varied as well. Get the pass code, open door, repeat until
the exit is found. There doesn't seem to be any sub missions, or
switches to toggle or traps to avoid. I did, however, find "secret"
zones that countained -OoOooOoooO- ammo and health.
Movement is confined to a flat plane. (No jumping,
or vertical movement at all). In fact, the whole game seems flat.
The characters, although animated well, look like cardboard cut-outs from
a Pop-Art gallery.
The actual game engine is quite slow on an 030 as
well, any 1x1 pixel modes (include CyberGraphX) crawls on an 030 at more
then half-screen. So for you lucky, 030 people playing with the Amiga Chip
Sets, your game screen will look something like this:
(instead
of)
This doesn't seem so bad, but CyberGraphX users with
030's will have to live with smaller and chopppier window sizes (since
they don't have the luxury of using a 2x2 pixel mode).
As for sound, AsimCDFS doesn't detect any audio tracks
on the disk, so there isn't an exciting CD-quality score playing to stir
up your emoitions. The only "music" in the game are at
the cut scenes. The cut-scenes soundtrack is mostly composed of long synthesizer
chords. The rest of the game are simple sounds. This definatly doesn't
help the game one bit. (The atmosphere, here again is clinical and unexciting.)
I must, however confess, that I haven't played this
game past level 3. (It grew a little too difficult, and I just didn't care
enough to play it again.) I'll wait until I get at least an 040 on one
of my machines before I continue playing this. Then again, I'd probably
try Alien Breed 3D-II, Gloom Deluxe and AmiQuake before I pop Nemac-IV in.
TO SUM IT UP:
I can't say that this is a landmark game. Although
it manages to be competent at being a Doom-clone, it's just not exciting
compared to it's breathen: Alien Breed 3D had atmosphere, which went into
it's sequel (along with lighting effects, but a slow game engine), Gloom
Deluxe had great explosions, CyberGraphX support, 2 player Split-Screen
modes and a slightly faster game engine and AmiQuake (not an official and
commercial product) has a horrendously slow game engine, but a very nice
and fully 3 dimensional environement.
However, it would be a good idea to support and encourage
Zentek into develloping more Amiga CD games. With a little more encouragement,
and experience, they could go a long way if they focus a little more on
gameplay.
Nemac IV - The Directors Cut | ||
Machine: | All Amigas | |
Workbench: | 2.04 | |
RAM: | 2 Meg | |
Hard-disk Install | Required | |
Disks: | 1 CD | |
Ease of Use:- | Needs just to have the pixel and window size settings available at the beginning. | 95% |
System Friendliness:- | It's OS friendly, and can run on ANY 680xx "Amiga" computer, Draco included! | 95% |
Graphics:- | Nice, polished and animated, but clinical, boring and flat. | 80% |
Sound:- | It's present, but doesn't give the game atmosphere. | 50% |
Playability:- | It's present, but doesn't give the game atmosphere. | 60% |
Speed- | Alien Breed 3D-II is slower, but AB3D-II had better graphic effects. | 75% |
OVERALL:- | 75% |