Wastelands
      (3D Construction Kit Game for Amiga on PD 577)

                  Reviewed by Nigel Parker

My mission brief was quite clear, I was to be lowered by
helicopter into the central grounds at the US nuclear base Europa.
Located there is the nuclear warhead Joshua which has become
unstable. Searching the compound I must shut down the main
computer system before it launches Joshua.

I quickly packed my sandwiches and a spare vest and made my way to
the pick up point. During the flight I had time to reflect on my
previous missions ... rescuing Tiddles from next door's tree ...
creosoting Mrs Lardback's shed ... clearing the peas and sweetcorn
from under Uncle Ted's freezer, but this mission was different and
far more deadly.

Dropping into the grounds I looked all around. The night sky was
black and the grey buildings reminded me of Basingstoke's multi
storey car park. I quickly located a door and activated its
control panel. Stepping into the room I noticed a large red button
standing proudly on a desk. Realising that I must go with my
instincts I hit it down hard. My ears pricked up when I heard a
distant clunking and I hurried back outside. The whole complex was
strangely silent but after further searching I realised where the
noise had came from. A secret door had opened on the side of a
long wall. Should I go in? Should I call for back up? Should I
shave my head, wear an itchy cassock and take up religion?....

Wastelands installed onto my hard drive with no problems but to
run it on my A1200 I had to disable CPU caches and use the
Original Chip Set on the Amiga's early start up pages. The
background music can thankfully be disabled with a simple click of
both mouse buttons. Control of your character is by the usual icon
interface. Energy and Laser power bars are also on view. Message
and location windows are situated at the lower part of the screen.
The location window has some strange graphical glitches going on
all the time which can be a little off-putting.

It is typical of the 3D Construction Kit games I have encountered
in that nothing much seems to be happening in any of the locations
you encounter.  Gameplay seems to consist of wandering around
looking on top and underneath tables, beds etc trying to find keys
(or keycards in this instance) to enable progress into further
rooms. It contains a few tricky puzzles but nothing to really suck
you in and you never feel under pressure despite the time limit.
You score points for certain actions in the game up to a possible
630. (I managed 200).

Graphics are standard fair for this type of thing with a
few inter-active bits and pieces (taps turn on etc) and sound
consists of a few dull effects. The game also contains a bug in
that if you lose all your laser energy and reload a saved game you
still have no laser energy! So you have to press Esc to restart
the game and then load your saved game.

The game kept me busy for a few nights and was quite easy to map
but then I got stuck in the NW Tower Bridge room and despite
having two cardkeys I could not get through the door. I lost heart
a bit at that point and never really felt the urge to retrace my
steps looking for an obscure button or switch.  So to sum up I
would have to say that I didn't really enjoy playing it and I
couldn't even be bothered to let the timer run out so I could see
Joshua launched! It's back to The Settlers for me.














                              - o -