Path: menudo.uh.edu!menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: sherman@panix.com (Sherman Chan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Barbarian II Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games Date: 31 Jan 1993 03:06:31 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 187 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <1kffnnINN52b@menudo.uh.edu> Reply-To: herman@panix.com (Sherman Chan) NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: game, arcade, puzzle, commercial [MODERATOR'S NOTE: This review was modified slightly on February 15 and 18, 1993. - Dan] PRODUCT NAME Barbarian II PUBLISHER UK: Psygnosis Ltd. South Harrington Building Sefton Street Liverpool L3 4BQ UK TEL - (051) 709 5755 USA: Psygnosis 29 Saint Mary's Court Brookline, MA 02146 USA TEL - (617)-731-3553 DESCRIPTION An arcade style "adventure" with elements of platform and fighting games worked in. LIST PRICE Unknown. I paid $12 at a software store clearing out what's left of its Amiga titles. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS 512K Amiga, one disk drive. No mention is made of compatibility with any specific model of Amiga, processor, or Kickstart version. The box notes this is the NTSC release. TEST HARDWARE Amiga 500 w/68000 7Mhz CPU 512K Chip - NTSC only 512k Slow 2 Megs of fast ram Kickstart 1.2 A1010 External floppy drive Kraft one button joystick COPY PROTECTION Disk based. The game does not appear to be HD installable, and requires a reboot to start, and exit. The recoverable RAM-disk I use (VD0:) does not survive the reboot to exit the game. REVIEW Barbarian II is one of three games I picked up at a software shop clearing out what was left of their Amiga section. The $12 price tag and my memories of Barbarian on the C64 make it the only one of the three I didn't think twice about buying. (The other two games are Agony and Thexder.) If you don't remember Barbarian, it's a one on one fighting game where you and the computer pitted your Conan-like combatants against each other. The action isn't particularly fast or furious, but there are a plethora of moves your sword fighter could perform. Choreographing them properly to fit your opponent's style is the game's charm. The supporting animation is gruesomely humorous: there's a goblin that dines on the remains of the loser; victims of the "beheading pirouette" manuever have their decapitated heads kicked about like a soccer ball; and so on. I don't think Barbarian II is the sequel to that game, though. While there certainly are similarities, the look and feel of the game (even accounting for hardware differences) are so radically different that I can't believe this is the sequel. Perhaps the title "Barbarian" is too generic to receive trademark protection, and more than one firm released some game(s) under that title. So if you're looking for the sequel to the C-64 game, this isn't it. [MODERATOR'S NOTE: Two readers have pointed out that Barbarian II is indeed *not* the sequel to this C-64 game. The Amiga version of the C-64 game is called "Death Sword." Barbarian II is the sequel to the Amiga game "Barbarian" created by Psygnosis. - Dan] But as a bargain-basement purchase, Barbarian II does have some things going for it. First is the gentle learning curve. There isn't too much that can't be figured out by experimenting and just poking around. Second is the save feature provided. This feature may be nothing new to many game players, but it's pleasant surprise for me, as I'm unaccustomed to finding such a feature outside of an adventure or strategy game. Last, the joystick controls are pretty intuitive, making it easy to choreograph a series of moves Conan would be proud of. The obligatory background scenario is as follows: you are Hegor the Barbarian, dragon slayer, and the hero who defeated the evil Necron (who also is your brother). But sometime later, you hear about Necron's underlings' bringing him back to life. So Hegor rushes off to take care of Necron, and this is where the game begins. After a beautifully animated opening sequence (which can be skipped by pressing the fire button), depicting Necron's transformation into a lich, the player is allowed to choose the language in which he wants the on-screen prompts to appear in. Then the game loads. Hegor starts out in a forest without any gold or weapons. There are various creatures and robbers hiding out here. Disposing of them allows Hegor to acquire their gold, weapons and potions. Eventually, the player will find a way into the caves, and Barbarian II begins to resemble a platform game here. The subterranean monsters are considerably tougher than the forest denizens, many of which must be simply avoided. The variety of attacks and strategies employed by the cave creatures makes it imperative that the player learn the joystick controls intimately here. To my surprise, I found many of the creatures in the later segments of the game easier to kill, though there are many more mechanical traps and puzzles (standard platform fare, disappearing ramps, trapdoors, chains) to impede progress. Game play is no more than hacking apart your opponents, jumping and climbing, and hitting or shooting objects in a certain order to gain access to new areas. But the combination of joystick jockeying and puzzling over combinations of actions makes the game a little deeper than a typical hack and slash. Barbarian II does suffer somewhat from what I call the "Sierra Syndrome", which is a situation where it's impossible to advance because you forgot to do something on a previous level. I wouldn't have a problem with this if you are allowed to return to correct the problem, but in several instances you cannot. Actually Barbarian II is fairly forgiving about this, but at several critical junctures it's possible for you to advance to the next level without exploring some alternate doors. And after advancing, often a column of stone drops into the passageway, preventing your return. Sierra Syndrome is a personal beef of mine, because I feel it has no place in an arcade style game. Barbarian II isn't a true arcade game, but there's still more joystick jockeying than brain strain involved, and mistakes should be correctable, or else instantaneous death should be inflicted. The latter doesn't occur in too many places in Barbarian II, probably because the player doesn't get multiple lives. The save option is invaluable in preventing frustration, as it's likely that you'll back yourself into a corner the first few times. The graphics are decent but nothing spectacular. The characters are detailed, and attention has been paid to their animation, but they're a little on the small side. The backgrounds are the best class of the in game graphics (but they can't touch the beautiful opening animations); even though they're never anything spectacular, the detail levels and textures present are surprising. You can see knots in the wood of the trees, the bumps in the castle wall stones, and the occasional cracked window or missing shingle on a building. There's even multi-layered scrolling in a few areas. For some reason, I think this game began life as some Atari ST code. The wood tones and greens remind me of some games I saw on a friend's ST eons ago. It's kind of like how I was always able to detect an Apple II screen shot years ago: the oranges and pinks were always hotter than those of the Atari 8bits and the C-64. The sound effects are a little disappointing. There's little more than Hegor's grunts and your enemies' howls. Digitized of course, but the other sounds are pretty much limited to chimes and the swish of your swinging weapon. The music that plays during the title screen isn't bad, and I wouldn't have minded hearing it play during the game (with an option to shut it off, of course). The game is a bit on the easy side. I was able to complete a less than optimal solution (the pause display told me I had completed 71% of the quest just before the final battle with Necron) in about eight hours of play. I did use the save function to back up after crucial mistakes, but I had thought the game would last longer than this. The game's end is disappointing. There's no animation or fanfare: just a screen shot of Hegor, and some words congratulating you for completing the quest. And I have no desire to play through the game again to try for a 100% quest completion. If Barbarian II cost me more than $12, I would've been a little angered, but as a budget purchase, I'm fairly satisfied with what I got. CONCLUSION If the game sounds appealing to you, and you can get it inexpensively, consider buying Barbarian II. The game doesn't provide enough replay value or first run longevity at a new game price. Don't pay more than $15 for it. Comments to: sherman@panix.com (Sherman Chan) --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu