Portals
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Have you ever wanted to download pizza?
Portals is a somewhat-early MZX game, traditional in many ways. It starts in prison (!), gives you lobombs that you'll likely use (!!), and is spattered with large boards sparsely populated with default enemies that are dealt with in typical ways (ehn). The funny thing is, though, that the game gets obviously better as play progresses. While at first nearly every line is cut off in default text boxes and boards are empty, uninspired fields, the game starts springing better things on you. First, there's actual background elements added, then things like a light engine, then a weapon engine, and then the game suddenly shifts gears to a more relaxed, adventure-oriented world. If it weren't for the large teleporter linking bug at the very end, the quality of the game as it goes on would be a heavily linear relationship. All of this does re-inforce the author's claim that he'd worked on it since 1.XX days.
The game starts out as a typical early MZX adventure, focused on leading you through various places to do default MZX shooting action. Trappings are minimal, with a basic hub world breaking up the action. The action is minimally taxing, at first; although ammo is sparse, so are enemies. It's even readily apparent where they'll spawn at one point, making avoiding them altogether feasible. The last action segment shows significantly better layout, and actually uses Robots for one part, but it doesn't last long at all. Bosses are basic, for the most part; the third uses the now-tried-and-true legitimate use of avalanche to create explosions en masse and actually releases sensible amounts of seekers (i.e. extremely few). There's some very basic MZX adventuring to keep things varied, and some nice utility engines (such as a secondary weapon and a robust cheat engine).
Sound is minimal. Music is an assortment of mostly classic tunes (dark.mod =o), though nothing really overused. Graphics scale from completely basic to fairly decent, with nice use of the overlay in some parts. The writing is decent; there's a trickle of MZX / pop-culture in-jokes and references.
The biggest issue with this game is the bugginess (or, better put, lack of bugtesting). Text frequently clips. The first boss can be completely skipped. One teleport at the very end of the game mislinks and essentially skips the last gameplay board.
The game gets a lot better as it progresses (like I've said already), but contains some massive bugs and ends just as it was getting good. It's still worth a shot, though. Three stars, give or take.
Portals is a somewhat-early MZX game, traditional in many ways. It starts in prison (!), gives you lobombs that you'll likely use (!!), and is spattered with large boards sparsely populated with default enemies that are dealt with in typical ways (ehn). The funny thing is, though, that the game gets obviously better as play progresses. While at first nearly every line is cut off in default text boxes and boards are empty, uninspired fields, the game starts springing better things on you. First, there's actual background elements added, then things like a light engine, then a weapon engine, and then the game suddenly shifts gears to a more relaxed, adventure-oriented world. If it weren't for the large teleporter linking bug at the very end, the quality of the game as it goes on would be a heavily linear relationship. All of this does re-inforce the author's claim that he'd worked on it since 1.XX days.
The game starts out as a typical early MZX adventure, focused on leading you through various places to do default MZX shooting action. Trappings are minimal, with a basic hub world breaking up the action. The action is minimally taxing, at first; although ammo is sparse, so are enemies. It's even readily apparent where they'll spawn at one point, making avoiding them altogether feasible. The last action segment shows significantly better layout, and actually uses Robots for one part, but it doesn't last long at all. Bosses are basic, for the most part; the third uses the now-tried-and-true legitimate use of avalanche to create explosions en masse and actually releases sensible amounts of seekers (i.e. extremely few). There's some very basic MZX adventuring to keep things varied, and some nice utility engines (such as a secondary weapon and a robust cheat engine).
Sound is minimal. Music is an assortment of mostly classic tunes (dark.mod =o), though nothing really overused. Graphics scale from completely basic to fairly decent, with nice use of the overlay in some parts. The writing is decent; there's a trickle of MZX / pop-culture in-jokes and references.
The biggest issue with this game is the bugginess (or, better put, lack of bugtesting). Text frequently clips. The first boss can be completely skipped. One teleport at the very end of the game mislinks and essentially skips the last gameplay board.
The game gets a lot better as it progresses (like I've said already), but contains some massive bugs and ends just as it was getting good. It's still worth a shot, though. Three stars, give or take.