Survivor - on SynTax PD 290
                    (RPG for Amiga)

                 Reviewed by Bill Commons

When I loaded this role playing game, I thought that it looked
great. Good graphics although it only uses about one eighth of the
screen for the playing area and the view is really nice with beige
walls and interlocking doors in grey.

The storyline is that you are on a space station and fast asleep
when hordes of aliens invade and kill all the occupants except
you. You have to kill all the aliens to survive.

There are lots of combinations of gameplay, being ten characters,
nine locations and an option for a speedy game. This seems to
speed up the messages and screen responses but it made me act
faster and carelessly so I was killed quicker.

Being awkward I started with the weakest of the crew, the cook,
and tried all locations and got killed in the first fight with any
alien.

I then chose the Captain and went to location four and wandered
around for several hours before getting killed. A map is essential
to prevent you from wandering around in circles as the corridors
wind back on themselves and you will soon get lost. Each location
seems to be on a 35 x 35 grid and although there is a mapping
system on some of the weapons and armour I could not make head or
tail of it, except for the location numbers, which I used to make
my maps.

Then I discovered the first drawback. After playing for five hours
I was tired and there is no save facility so you must start the
next game from square one.

I mapped the locations and cut the playing time down to two hours
but still never finished the section.

If the alien is strong, you will get a string of messages saying
'you hit the alien for 10, 15 of these were deflected, the attack
was useless' or 'you missed'. There is a similar list from the
alien attacks. This can go on for as long as you want to waste
time on it.

When you have sorted it all out, you can attack the aliens in
order of strength but it still takes a long time.

One other niggle is that the messages are red on a black
background which I found very hard to read on my monitor, but this
could be my eyes.

I then went to station one and completed it while I was trying to
draw my map, this was much easier.

If you had the patience to play all the characters in all the
stations it would be a game that would keep you occupied for a
very long time, but I don't think that I could do this after
playing it a few times.