Damocles - Novagen RRP œ24.95
                 (Arcade adventure on 1 disk)

                   Reviewed by Alan Beer

Set in the same 3D environment as Domark's Castle Master, Damocles
is the follow-up to the arcade adventure Mercenary: Escape from Targ.
If you still have a winning saved game of this, you can load it into
Damocles and your inventory holdings will then reflect your previous
inventory. Damocles is fully memory resident so once the game has
loaded you can remove the game disk and leave your save disk in.

Mercenary is a game which I have yet to play where apparently you are 
confined to one planet which you can only leave on completing the game.
This time around, you get about 26 planets and moons to play with, some
of which have no air supply and some have toxic gases in their
atmospheres. There are also 2 gas giants.

About 4 years ago you were invited by the State President of the planet
Eris to save it from destruction by the comet Damocles which is on a 
collision course. Unfortunately you are unexpectedly delayed and now
you've only got a few hours before Damocles hits.

When you finally arrive at Eris capital city spaceport you find you can
no longer use your ship, but fortunately you've been left a car and the
key which needs to be picked up is in the spaceport building.

By now you've been instructed by Benson your personal computer to go
to the state office for a full briefing. This is done by boarding the
car and driving along the exit road and entering the first building
you come to.

The President will offer you a sum of money as a reward. By not
answering him he will assume you have turned him down, by which time
he will increase his offer. When you decide to accept his offer you
can say ok by pressing the key 'o'. Only when you accept the mission
will you be given access to the basement where you will find a key to
your new spacecraft which you can use for interplanetary flight.

Now this is where the real fun starts. Apart from being able to fly
to the other islands on Eris you can fly to the other planets and this
is also the best way to do your maps, as you can hover over the islands.

Objects can be found all over the place. Some buildings hold loads of
stuff and many don't hold anything. Some useful items to find are a Memo
pad, Filofax and Top Secret file. One of the most useful items is a
computer A to Z which informs you of the name of the building or island
you are passing. There are quite a few shops about where you can sell
any object you find or buy what they have on display in the window, but
you can only sell one item in each shop.

There are 3 types of transport (apart from walking, that is). You have
cars and  other ground vehicles and then there's the spacecraft which
as I've said before can be used for interplanetary flight.

Control of movement could not be simpler. Walking is initiated by
movement of the joystick. To run you just press the key 'R'. In other
forms of transport speed is controlled by pressing any key from '1' to
'9' and '0' for maximum speed. Reverse is achieved by use of the
function keys.

In some of the buildings you'll find another form of transport in the 
shape of a large black box with a number on it - yep it's a teleporter
which will save you so much time getting around. And while we are on the
subject of time, when in space travelling between planets where you have
to accelerate to near light speed to get anywhere, if you look at 
your timer you'll see it has speeded up. This is all down to Einstein's
Theory of Relativity proving 'moving clocks go slow' so your timer now
reflects this. Basically this means you have less time to go.

Damocles is a mixture of arcade adventure, flight simulator, driving 
simulator and a bit of space flight. The graphics update is very fast
and smooth and there are some nice little touches like the way the
other planets set and rise over the horizon and if you go to the top
of one of the buildings and look out of the window you can see your
car parked down below. The planets also have days and nights.

In Damocles you can never be killed so in theory you can keep on playing
and playing. Even when the planet Eris has been destroyed you can
continue to explore everywhere else.

Damocles is very addictive so be prepared for many a late night playing.
It may not go on the top of your list but it should be on it somewhere
as it's well worth the money.