VR Stalker: review by Justin Beech

Text by Justin Beech <justinb@lehman.com>

Introduction:

Hi people.

Incredible News. Japan gets a English Game before _you_ do! Nova Storm. By PsyIcantspellit, brought to Japan by T&E Soft. Rated "E". (whassat then?). $65 or thereabouts.

I didnt expect to like this title, I thought, oh no! another boring "Burning Microcosm" type game. Well, I wont keep you in suspense. Its quite good! Actually, if you only compare it to spooled video type games it is 'effing good!

Psygnosis has a name for doing incredibly flash intros and wonderful sci-fi cover game boxes, and then forgetting to put an actual game in there. The Amiga community would groan as they stared at yet another glorious screen shot of some upcoming Psyc. title knowing that in the end it would be buying 6 disks, 5.8 of which were the 1 minute SGI-quality intro, and the remaining 30K was Pong.

Well, the company hasn't changed much, but on the 3DO with spooled video, they are able to have fun with their raytracers all the way through the game! And they go to town!

The plot:

You must attack a renegade AI that is turning on man, destroying outlying colonies, etc etc. You travel to four planets, volcanic, desert, I-dont-know, and I-dont-know. Each plant has 4-5 mega-bosses to defeat after you destroy all the swirling little opponents. You get 7 ships, and various weapon powerups (that are varied, but timeout). When you lose a ship, you dont lose your weapon powerups. So its really like you got 7 shields.... You also get some smart bombs that make for pretty effects...[but slow the game down to a crawl]. single-player only, (I think), which is a shame.

Spooled Video:

Ok, its spooled video, but very high quality. Sometimes distractingly so.. They shrunk the video area down for greater quality, but not to the extent of Burning Solider, ie, its not so bad at all, in fact it looks letter-box-movie-ish which gives it a some more atmosphere.

Music:

Its great! No inappropriate guitar thrash. Sounds like some of the best Amiga mod writers were on this... electronic and very clear, amazing considering how much bandwidth must be occupied by the incoming video stream. Different music for each level of course......

The Bosses:

Upon first sight, they are all awesome. [why wouldn't they be when they are just movies]. they have one "soft spot" which usually moves around and/or they hurl heaps of stuff at you. When you finally nail them, you get this great movie-style explosion and disintegration scene.

Collision detection:

95% of the time you can move around 100% of the screen, sometimes the "camera" whizzes past some landscape obstruction which you should dodge to avoid damage, but mostly, you can move anywhere. [Dont forget, your view is fixed, a picture of your ship buzzes around the screen.

Sprites:

There are many different enemy types, and you get introductions to them as the game goes on. Unlike Burning Soldier, they move more, they rotate, tumble and so on and of course scale into the distance and come back at you, but their missiles are sometimes hard to see against the background. The explosions are cool, big semi-transparent petrol fireballs. Overall, though, the sprites still look "stuck on" the movie. I havent figured out if they react to where you are yet, they certainly come in patterns.

Cut scenes:

Heaps. Sometimes, in mid-battle, the view will change to a great picture of your face, strapped in with all this aiming gadgetry hanging over your eyes being shook to shit by the ships engines. Also, often you get lots of loving external camera roves around your ship, particularly as it dispatches a boss or comes to the next point in the game. The raytraced spooled video scenes of your ship are great.. its really a very cool ship and lots of detail has gone into it.... When you finally die, you get a cut-scene of you hanging on to the controls as the fireball implodes upon you. Grim stuff.

Other stuff:

None really, no level selects, no password, no game-save, just music-volume and plug-n-play, and high-score table.

Lastability:

Ah. Glad you asked. First time I played this, I got to level 2 of world 2, after defeating six bosses or so. So that means, I got almost 40% of the game done, with 7 lives. (8.2M points). Now when I start again, I'll have to go through all this again, and 10th time I play it, I'll be pretty bored. The brain won't see the backgrounds any more, so I'll be left with a galaxian type shooter. So I dont rate lastability very high, but then, what do you expect ?

Conclusion:

This game certainly beats the crap out of any Phillips CDi title, and I think its worth the money, but not for people who get bored with shootemups..

-- Justin Beech justinb@lehman.com
michel.buffa@essi.fr