Grimlor
          An 'RPG' (sorta) for the PC on Disk 862

             Reviewed by James Judge on a 486sx

You are the mighty, the valiant, the altruistic dragon slayer
named Sir Merdimek.  You have been given the task of hunting down
the dragon called Grimlor and retrieving all the souls of the
children which have been stored into the Gem of Souls by the
aforementioned Grimlor.

And so you clutch your crossbow and enter the lair of Grimlor with
a determined glint in your eye, a confident swagger in your step
and a slight tick in your left cheek that annoys everyone you
speak to.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all there is to this game.
Enter the lair, find the jewel and win the game.

Sounds OK, but how does the game play?

Well, how many of you have played the old arcade (and Spectrum)
classic Gauntlet?  Remember how you viewed all the action from a
bird's-eye view and shot arrows (if you were the elf) everywhere,
trying to kill all the beasties and picking up chests of gold?
Well, this game is something not too far removed from this
concept.

The bird's-eye view is there, so are the arrows, and the monsters
and the chests of gold. The graphics are more colourful (but not
better) and the sound is terrible (a few blips and blops). There
is also no magic, so you are left slogging through all the rooms
with just a crossbow (which has a limited number of bolts). Also
the gameplay has gone, as well as the two, three or four player
options. Now it doesn't sound all that good...

With Gauntlet the screen moved at a fair pace, even when it was
clogged with monsters, but this game moves at horrible speeds. You
can select your type of computer for the computer to set a base
speed at (either 386sx, 386DX or 486) and then use the <F> and <S>
keys to speed up or slow down the action. The trouble is the way
the game has been programmed. You can't walk wherever you want,
the screen seems to be split into a grid, and you can only walk
into a square once every keypress and there is a slight pause
between each step. This would be OK if you could select a proper
speed. No matter how much I have fiddled with the speed everything
moves either too quickly (making monsters impossible to shoot or
you end up pressing the forward key once and end up walking into a
wall for ten moves) or too slowly (monsters become sitting ducks
and it takes an age to move from one side of the screen to the
next).

Another annoying feature is that you can only have one arrow in
flight at the same time. The reason for this is that when you
press the space-bar, everything freezes apart from the arrow which
then plods its way across the screen, square by miserable square.

And that is all there really is to the game.  Go through each
screen killing all the monsters, collecting the gold and looking
for a way out. To make the game more 'exciting' there is a small
selection of monsters (some take more than one hit to kill -
gasp!) as well as a few secret passages.

These secret passages truly are secret - there is no way you can
identify which wall is real or false unless you walk around every
square of every screen and nut each wall. If the game moved at a
reasonable speed it would be OK, but as it moves so erratically
the prospect of nutting each wall block sends shivers coursing up
and down my back.

The only real way of using these passages (which, in a couple of
places, is necessary) is to go to the centre of the level and look
at the map that is provided there. This then shows the positioning
of all the major items (ie more bolts for your crossbow and gold)
as well as all the rooms and secret passages.

This rather defeats the point of the game in my eyes. The fighting
aspect is really easy and that is the only thing you do regularly
(two or three times every couple of screens).  So, the only other
hook for the game is trying to figure out where you are. One good
point for the game is that it is so large - there are screens upon
screens, as well as quite a few levels (which, thankfully, I
haven't explored). Being so large it takes a little bit of brain
power to orientate yourself to where you are in relation to
previous rooms.

Other than that the game is trash; 7 megabytes of trash, to be
exact. Still, if you enjoy trash get this, pay the $25
registration fee and be happy for a little while (you sad thing).










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