Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett From: leon@stack.urc.tue.nl (Leon Woestenberg) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Roketz Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games Date: 28 Jun 1995 18:50:43 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 404 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <3ss8a3$v0i@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: leon@stack.urc.tue.nl (Leon Woestenberg) NNTP-Posting-Host: astro.cs.umass.edu Keywords: game, shoot-em-up, race, shareware Originator: barrett@astro.cs.umass.edu PRODUCT NAME Roketz, full registered version 1.3 BRIEF DESCRIPTION A "Shoot and Race through Space" game. Race and/or fight against an opponent with your custom-equipped space fighter. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: The Farm Address: P.O. Box 410 Tallinn EE0900 Estonia Europe E-mail: ott@ml.ee (Ott M. Aaloe of The Farm) Apart from The Farm's address, there are registration sites in the UK and USA. Their addresses can be found in the free demo version. LIST PRICE $15 (US), DM 25 or UK 10. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE An Amiga 1200 or Amiga 4000 is needed. PAL capable television set or monitor. I could not test this game under screenmode promotion. Fast RAM is recommended for hard disk owners, as they may need to boot without startup-sequence and Workbench to get the game running. At least one joystick is advisable, as playing this game with two players on one keyboard might be troublesome. SOFTWARE Nothing special really: the diskfont.library and mathtrans.library must be available. These come default with the Workbench, and are present on the Roketz disks as well. COPY PROTECTION None. It is illegal to distribute the registered version, and as your name is in the startup screen, you will be kept from just doing that. :-) The limited demo version is meant to be copied, and is freely available at Aminet FTP sites and other public domain sources. The program can be installed onto hard disk, and can be run from the Workbench by it's icon. After installation, you do not need the original disks any more to start the game. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING An Amiga 4000/040 with 2 MB Chip RAM and 8 Mb Fast RAM. High density internal disk drive. 540 MB Quantum IDE hard drive. Workbench under Kickstart 3.1. Philips Television/Monitor for PAL/NTSC. INSTALLATION The game was shipped onto two double density disks that contain a bootable, ready-to-run game that does not need disk swapping during the game. The installation procedure is just as it should be; Start from your Workbench, insert the first disk, click on the install icon and the Commodore Installer program will ask you where to install Roketz. There are no assigns made, which is a definite plus. If you already had the demo installed onto hard disk, you can optionally overwrite this with the registered version. The high scores and other statistics will remain. Easiest installation process I've ever seen for a game. It works just as it should work. NOTE This review describes the full registered version version of Roketz. There's also a limited demo version that is freely distributable. The full game differs only in the number of available levels, ships, engines, weapons and equipment systems. ROOKIE ROKETEER The freely distributable demo from Aminet got my attention and was the beginning of my career as a "Roketeer"; that's what a spaceship pilot in Roketz is called. The demo features two levels whilst the full registered version has six levels. A level consists of large playfields, with space, objects and rock. Levels represent planet environments in a futuristic world where men are Roketeerz, and Corvettes are Roketz. You choose your Roket from the available models, four in the full version. Each Roket has distinct flying characteristics and carries an onboard cannon, as well as a specialized weapon. These are different for each model, giving a lot of combinations to choose from. Personally, I like the "HPD series homing pod" weapon which flaks a cloud of bullets which home in on the enemy's Roket. Cool or what?! But then, why would you need weapons? You can also gain points by racing the circuit that is set out in each level. (Sometimes knowledge of the Estonian language seems handy when trying to race a circuit, as there's graffiti all over the place :-) You would just choose the fastest Roket and set record race times; no weapons needed. THINK AGAIN Think again. There's an opponent who wants to rock you, and who wants to beat your record lap time. Apart from the gravity field, this is your worst enemy, and he or she (Yes, there are Miss Roketeerz as well :-)) is equipped with a load of weapons to bring you down, quick. So, in order to race, you need to fight. In order to fight, you need to race; as often the escape can be your only way out to return to your docking bay, where you can quickly land to refuel and rearm, before the enemy finds you sitting duck on your dock :-). As a Roketz pilot, there are a lot of things on your mind: Is my fuel low? Do I have any XYZ weapons left? Who's on my six? What's that plopping sound I here? I have to cut this corner here, then bypass or shoot the enemy who's blocking the race circuit a split second in front of me. What are those plasma sparks right ahead of me?!! Don't worry, it's just a teleporter that will warp you to the other end of the level..! BACK TO REALITY OK, back to reality for a moment. The title screen that introduces the game is very nicely raytraced. The theme music guides you from the title screens into the setup screens where you can enter yourself into the pilot database, which at least has one "anonymous" player and one "CPU" player. Apart from those, every pilot's personal log will kept, along with all your flight statistics, such as the number of kills, your win/lose ratio, race lap records and much more. Also, you can setup your Roketz' configuration here: model, engine, weapons, fuel, armament load, special equipment such as "life recharger", "bumper field generator" or "Zion panic shield". (Have a guess yourself what these might be...) For each Roket, your personal weapon setup will be saved, to save you from the hassle to setup your preferred flight machine again and again. A very nice feature indeed. All those settings are defined using big, easy-to-understand icons. Also, the controls can be chosen; either one of the joysticks, or keys on your keyboard. In case you don't like the default keys as controls, you can define them yourself. Everything is saved to your pilot file. Hundred percent comfort. AT YOUR DISPOSAL To avoid there being one perfect Roket configuration, the game offers you a number of credits that you can exchange for goodies, such as fuel, weapons and add-on systems. Each credit represents one life, i.e., one Roket ship. Therefore, a well equipped Roketeer has a small number of lifes, and must use his (or her) goodies well to get out of the battle as a winner. There's a minimum of five lives, and a maximum of ten to start with. GOAL OF THE GAME If you end the battle with zero lives, you are a loser. If not, you are a winner. Simple as that. Period. ENTERING THE ENVIRONMENT After the setup, which is only needed after game startup, the level selector appears, consisting of ray-traced imagery of the available levels. After the selection of the battlezone or circuit, depending on your motives, the level is loaded from (hard) disk. During loading, a short description of the environment is displayed, showing that the game authors have a good fantasy, as well as a good sense for humor. (Did you ever space-race in the let-overs of the Fisney (tm) amusement park? I bet you didn't :-) GRAVITY'N'ROCK After loading, the splitscreen fades in, showing both Roketz in vertical position at their landing platforms. Roketz are vertical take-off and landing craft, so you may need to get acquainted with the controls in the beginning. After vertical take-off, you notice that the gravity force pulls you back to ear...eh... planet again. Gravity is what keeps you from flying straight as a rookie pilot, and rock walls is what keeps you from living longer then 10 seconds. :-) GETTING THE HANG After getting the hang of controls, you explore the space system you're in. It can be a rock cave, or a left-over from a large air cooling plant, or... After you know what you should avoid doing (landing upside down, flying into walls, etc.) you might want to push the trigger for a while to get an idea of what you carry with you: big bangs or whats-that-popping-sound-thingies? Now you know how the handle your deadly machine: go and haunt your enemy, or start your attempt for a new world lap record time on this race circuit. The gameplay that follows now, is one that you must personally experience, and that is hard to describe. It involves smooth race flights, with faaast space sprints and tight corners, avoiding missiles, distracting the enemy, high speed pursuits in mid space, playing with the trigger and quick refuel and re-arm landings. During the game, small bonus symbols appear in space; getting these bonuses gives you extra lives, health, fuel or armament. Also, there are turbo's, which come in quite handy when you are racing, or not when you are facing a rock wall :-) Personally, I like two player games, and I think this is one with excellent gameplay. There are soundeffects all through the game, and especially the sound of a faaast Roket is very thrilling. EQUAL JUSTICE It may be just so, that your opponent is a "Senat" Roketeer, has 100 hours of flight experience, and has a 80% win/lose ratio. For those situations, the game somewhat supports you as a "nubie" pilot by giving away "equalization points". These points are given to the overall (race and fight) loser of the latter few combats. Although the points do not offer total compensation (hey, that's not what points are for, ya know?! :-), they give your opponent some handicap to get higher and higher in the rankings. THE STATZ And that's where the statistics come in. Right after you two Roketeerz left the battle scene, a full blown screen loaded with numbers fades in, presenting you with the stats for the battle you just had, but also each pilot's up-to-date personal stats, such as flight hours. Apart from just winning and losing, you can keep track of your overall results as a Roketeer. You can check whether you are still a "Nubie", or whether you may call yourself "Elite". THE INTRO The intro is a separate program and is shown each time you start the game from floppy disk. Hard disk users have separate icons for the intro and game, but floppy disk users have to edit the startup-sequence (of their copy) in order to skip the intro sequence. The intro consists of a fancy cartoon-style demo that introduces you to Roketz. It provides need-to-know information on what makes a Roketeer a cool dude. It is fun to watch, but as most intro's, you may want to leave it as it is, and go for the game at once. DOCUMENTATION The Farm is very environment-conscious: There is no printed documentation. It would be overkill to have it, as the in-game information pages guide you through everything you wish to know. (About Roketz, that is :-) It explains the goal of the game, the setup screens, flight controls, and gives away some hints for rookie Roketeerz, as well as registration sites, credits etc. LIKEZ The ultimate game to beat your worst enemy, or best friend, in a futuristic environment. Excellent gameplay. The game sports splendid, realistic and colorful grafix in smooth scrolling splitscreens, which is a beauty for the eye. Most of the grafix are raytraced, resulting in outstanding backgrounds and realistic motion of your Roket. The sound effects give an extra boost to the game, and the Roketz music theme is cool. It adds the right atmosphere to the game, and keeps your heartbeat high during the title and options screens. (Those screens that appear in between battles, ya know? :-)) The game is complete, there's nothing missing (except some multiplayer support: see SUGGESTIONZ). Very good support. DISLIKEZ I don't find this game attractive to play on my own. The computer cyberplayer is no match for a Roketeer, neither when racing nor when fighting. There is no option to enter a level alone. SUGGESTIONZ A null modem cable link would be a nice plus for this two player game. This would allow full screen action and, maybe more important, makes it impossible to have your opponent watch your actions by simply peeking at your splitscreen. Even a bigger plus would be network support. Why? Because this is a two player game, and you cannot always find a Roketeer virtually near you. Internet support would be cool, but this may be impossible due to the "connectionless" nature of Internet data streams, which is packet oriented. A tournament mode, where multiple players fight and race in one-to-one combats, would make a Roketeer party more fun. :-) I should note that The Farm is looking into some things mentioned above. The readme says a free update is in the making that will include more ships, levels and improved gameplay, and maybe a serial link option. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTZ First of all, Roketz is the first game I bought in years. Although I don't have the latest commercial games, I know what's hot and what's not. Roketz is hot. Compared to a commercial game, Roketz stands out through artistical perfection in music, soundeffects, graphics and gameplay. It's low price makes it have an exceptional high quality/price ratio. The are numerous older games that are based around the classic idea where you have to fight an opponent, in a gravity forcefield. Things I've played are "Thrust" on the Commodore 64, "Gravity Force II" and "Fly Harder" on the Amiga and a few others of which I have forgotten the name. This successful, classic idea is implemented in a very nice way in Roketz. The shareware nature of the game, makes it have more dynamic support than a commercial game would have. Very often, there is no way to get a free bugfix for commercial games. With Roketz, the bugfixes were all free, and even a free (extended) update is announced. The nice thing is that I knew what I bought (well, almost :-) because the demo version showed me what the game was really about. I know I got value for money, a thing that is often not true when buying a commercial game just by it's first impressions. BUGS There is a small bug in the control selections which you encounter when selecting a nonconnected joystick. When in this situation, one needs to temporarily swap joystick connectors to get on. To be honest, I haven't reported this bug yet. (Blush...) VENDOR SUPPORT I've reported earlier bugs via E-mail and I can say that my report was handled very well. All mentioned bugs were removed in the next release, and I got a friendly response back. I was kept up-to-date when a bugfix was ready, and I was sent an update by E-mail. Also, when a World Wide Web page was introduced I was informed on this via E-mail. WARRANTY There is no warranty involved. This is software; bits and bytes cannot wear out after years of usage. Floppy disks can. You are instructed to make backups of the original disks as soon as you receive them. CONCLUSIONS Roketz rocks. Therefore I would rate this game 9 rocks out of 10. ;-) COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1995 by Leon Woestenberg. This review may be copied as a whole for non-commercial reasons only. For partial or commercial copies or publications you must have written permission from the author. E-mail: leon@stack.urc.tue.nl --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews