Attack of the Mutant Penguins

Atari Jaguar

by Keith Estanol

Introduction:

Once more .. in the face of cold defeat and the approaching onslaught of corporate games, another screaming warrior representing creativity, awesome graphics and excellent gameplay is thrown into the fray. Attack of the Mutant Penguins has arrived and invasion is nigh! This time they don't even make the pretense of a good plot, just some head-bangin' action and plenty of laughs! In this game, a horde of aliens disguising themselves as what they think the earth's dominant species is (penguins) invade the earth and threaten to blow it to bits with a doomsday device. This causes some concern amongst the real penguins and they catch the attention of Rodney and Bernard, the Galaxy's foremost do-gooders. Rodney's armed with a frying pan and Bernard's armed with a baseball bat. Seems unlikely to stop a horde of aliens? Think again!

Graphics:

• Opening Screens and Intros:
  • The very first opening screens aren't so good, with nothing else but the title and instructions for going into the game (press A B or C and such drek). However .. the screen for picking which character you want to play is VERY good. The background for this screen looks like it's True Color and the animations of the characters as you rotate them is very smooth and fluid. The characters themselves look very detailed and well done. When selecting a character, they loom up close to the screen and do the pixellation bit. At this point though, who cares?
• In Game Backgrounds:
  • The in-game playing area and backgrounds are small at first but get bigger. All in all, these are AWESOME! Not as good as Highlander's backgrounds, but they come pretty darned close. They're very detailed with many different types of textures on them. The 3D playing field contrasts nicely with the flat background and there is very nice movement on all the planes that the playing field occupies.
• In Game Character Graphics:
  • The character sprites are excellently drawn and animated. The fake penguins and the real penguins all move like what you'd expect, that is, waddling around. Rodney and Bernard are both drawn very well, and move excellently. However, when you stop movement, wether you were moving diagnoal or straight, your character would stop in one of the 4 cardinal directions. A quirck that I didn't mind much.
• Bonus Games Backgrounds:
  • Game bonuses backgrounds are very nicely done, although not as good as the in-game backgrounds. The color choices contrast nicely with the guns, water, and/or invading ships.
• Bonus Games Character Graphics:
  • All character movements in the bonus games are smooth and fluid. The sprites for the characters themselves are very good, even if only 1 out of 3 are 3D while 2 are 2D. All in all, very good execution.

Sound:

• In Game Music:
  • For the most part, there is no in-game music. There was someone who said that this might be due to the limitations in bandwidth. I thought so too until I played a level where you could put a coin in the jukebox and music played while the sound effects kept coming and I kept bopping the mutant penguins. So now I think that the lack of music in most of the game may be due to game design and not a limitation in bandwidth. If the game were designed so that some of the machines produced music, then it would be really hard to integrate in game music with that in mind.
• In Game Sound Effects:
  • Very crisp sounding! The heavy breathing of the doom device sounds like it's in stereo. Each is appropriate to the task, and there is a lot of humor kept in mind for this game.
• Bonus Games Music:
  • None here, although game design wouldn't necessarily disallow music at this point .. Hmm .. strange.
• Bonus Games Sound Effects:
  • Same as in-game sound effects.

Gameplay:

• The gameplay is what RULED about this game! What you do as either Rodney or Bernard is to stop the doomsday machine from blowing up the earth. You have a variety of playfields to get through to do this. How do you do it? You find gremlins and use them to drop into machines which can kill the alien penguins, dropping them into treasure chests which give you either the parts to your weapon or other goodies such as powerups, extra gremlins, extra penguins, etc etc. Your goal is to prevent the alien penguins from getting to the other side of the scale of the doomsday machine and to get the good penguins on your side of the doomsday machine. If too many alien penguins get on their side of the scale, the machine goes off and you are hosed. You can prevent them from getting there and bopping them with your weapon, blowing them up with the dynamite or activating a machine to do your killing for you. The thing with the weapons is that you can't kill them right away, you have to grab the powerups to power your weapon to 'killing mode', which can kill both good and evil penguins so you have to be really careful. The other weird thing is that your character can't use the 3D constructs in the playing field, but the other characters can. Your character can use the teleporters to get from place to place though. As the game progresses, you get different, bigger, and more complex playing fields, as well as better machines, different powerups (the samurai powerup comes to mind). There are a number of good solutions in each playing field so you have a choice as to what you can do. Do you powerup all the machines first or do you open all the treasure boxes? Should you open this switch to release all the good penguins or wait until later? Ahh ..the power of choice. Make the wrong one and it's one toasty planet!
• Bonus Games!!!
  • There are 3 bonus games that go in between the playing fields. When you finish a stage, you get to a bonus game, which consists of: Penguin Range, Penguin Attack and Penguin Control.
    • Penguin Range consists of a crosshair and two guns which fire at wherever you target. These targets are various baddies, which include penguins or other things.
    • Penguin Attack is your basic space invaders clone, and you get three lives to complete it.
    • Penguin Control is where you get 3 guns which have various ranges and you lob balls at either long, mid-range, or short-range targets. Your score determines the amount of extra penguins you get for the next round.

What I liked:

• The graphics!
• The sound!
• The gameplay!
• The innovation!

What I didn't like:

• The fact that there are some areas that your character can walk into and disappears into. Oh well, tough cookies. You didn't sign up for a picnic.

Overall:

--Keith C. Estanol

• <kce@netcom.com>

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