Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: sachs@crayola.cse.psu.edu (Mark B Sachs) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Turrican 3 Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games Date: 1 Jan 1994 18:57:57 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 150 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <2g4h3l$fu2@menudo.uh.edu> Reply-To: sachs@crayola.cse.psu.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: game, shoot-em-up, platform, commercial PRODUCT NAME Turrican 3 BRIEF DESCRIPTION It's a platform shoot-em-up game. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Factor 5/Rainbow Arts LIST PRICE $49.99 (US). Local dealer price $35.95. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE According to the manual, Turrican III will take advantage of extra RAM to reduce loading times, and will take advantage of a faster CPU to manipulate on-screen objects more efficiently. Indeed, loading times were very quick and BOB movement very smooth on my A3000. Also, there were no hassles because I happened to be running in NTSC mode. SOFTWARE None mentioned. COPY PROTECTION Disk protection. Not hard drive installable. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 3000, NTSC, 2M Chip RAM, 4M Fast RAM. REVIEW It's been a while since the original Turrican and Turrican II blasted their way into the Amiga game scene. The first Turrican featured mind-bendingly impressive (and colorful) graphics, bloody enormous levels, kicky music and enough firepower to make even the National Rifle Association happy. Not long after that came Turrican II, with graphics that blew Turrican I out of the water, wonderful 7-voice music, and enough firepower to make even the NRA feel slightly ill. Both are classics, indeed, archetypes of the platform shooter genre. What could top that? Not willing to leave well enough alone, Factor 5 has returned with the third part of the trilogy, imaginatively named Turrican III. The scenario is familiar. Long ago humanity's arch-nemesis, The Machine, was apparently destroyed; the galaxy enjoyed a period of existence that was happy, peaceful, and on the whole tax free. But of course this couldn't last -- the Machine returned and went back to its old tricks of blowing up planets and enslaving innocents. Who's going to drop down to the Machine's planet and blast his way through uncounted numbers of evil minions to put an end to this unpleasantness, and not incidentally rescue the cute manga babe whose cry for help alerted everyone to the menace? Looks like a job for Bren McGuire, who, with a heavily armed Turrican powersuit, purple hair, and chin the size of Texas, is definitely qualified to take it on. All this is explained in the game's intro -- very stylishly done, with scrolling backgrounds, text, and ominous music that matches the narrative very well. Turrican III, like its two predecessors, is a platform shoot-em-up with bosses, powerups, hidden areas, the whole deal. As you may have guessed, the concept is not exactly intellectual; no strategy or planning involved, just straight death and destruction. But that's OK. It's worked before and worked well. Anyway, after seeing the intro, I was very impressed, and eager to see the game itself. All that was left to do was to select Control Method (the game supports two-button joysticks and Sega MegaDrive joypads -- a definite plus), pick a difficulty level (from "Easy" to "Maniac") and off we go! This, unfortunately, is where I stopped being quite so impressed. Turrican III isn't BAD, really. But, sadly, it does not live up to its predecessors. Admittedly Turrican II -- with its colorful copper backdrops, multilevel parallax scrolling, massive armaments, and so forth -- is a hard act to follow, but the third installment isn't even at the level of Turrican I, much less II. First disappointment: the flamethrower, the most useful weapon from TI and II (you can play it in any direction around you to take care of baddies above or below the level of your gun) is gone! It's been replaced by a Bionic Commando-style rope with which you can, er, swing up to high places. The rope is kind of neat, but I'd rather have the flamethrower to be honest. Second disappointment: the graphics feel, well, SMALL. Small and junky. Console-like. Which shouldn't be a surprise, as this is really a conversion of "Super Turrican" for the Super NES console. But the stylish touches that made the previous two installments so perfect are entirely absent. The palettes are drab, rather than colorful (there is obvious dithering everywhere), the parallax scrolling looks unrealistic, and worst of all your weaponry is NOT impressive. As for the in-game music, it's OK, but it doesn't provide the wonderful atmosphere we saw in the previous two. Third disappointment: there's a fine line between "playable" and "too damn easy." TI and II were playable. TIII is too damn easy. It took merely an hour to complete the game on Normal difficulty level; very few places were actually difficult to get through. The majority of the levels are highly linear and compressed, almost pushing you straight to the exit. Even the (few) non-linear levels are crowded with "EXIT" arrows everywhere, making finding your way through no challenge at all. "Mark," I can hear you saying, "there must be SOME good points." Well, OK, there are a few. The intro's pretty nice, as I said. The game speed cannot be faulted -- no slowdowns anywhere. There are a fair number of bosses, which I personally happen to like. A few of the levels ARE quite stylish, such as a giant factory towards the end, swimming and underwater sections, and an H. R. Giger-esque freight train (I kid you not) that was a nervewracking experience to get across. But even these levels were far too short and featured few nifty or unusual touches. Um... did I mention that the intro was quite nice? That's about all I can say. Turrican fans will be disappointed, I guarantee; the latest installment in the venerable trilogy doesn't follow the time-honored formula, smells too much of the console conversion that it is, and, well, as much as I wanted to before actually playing it, I can't recommend that you buy Turrican III. CONCLUSIONS I wanted to like this game. I really did. But I didn't. Buy "Hired Guns" instead. Mark B. Sachs sachs@crayola.cse.psu.edu --- 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 Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews