English Software
48K cassette £8.95
48K disk £12.95
1 player
Joystick
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ELEKTRAGLIDE is the new futuristic
race game from English Software. Although marketed as a race game,
this is slightly misleading as there are no other competitors on
the track and the aim is simply to survive for as long as possible.
To do this you will have to drive hard and fast and also out-manoeuvre
a variety of tricky obstacles.
At the outset you are given the
choice of three steering envelopes which determine how your vehicle
responds to joystick control. You can then choose from 3 different
tracks in 3 world countries - UK, America or Australia - but again,
this is misleading as to my eyes all three tracks are identical
apart from the odd difference in colour-shading.
Unlike the majority of race games,
Pole Position included, you do not see your own vehicle as such.
Your view is, in fact, a view out of the front windscreen of your
vehicle with a dashboard display at the bottom of the screen to
keep you informed of your speed and count-down timer, etc. You begin
Stage One of the game in a tunnel and you must try to reach the
next tunnel (Stage Two) before the timer on the dashboard reaches
zero. You do all this whilst attempting to avoid wet patches on
the road, electrostatic columns beamed down by overhead rockets
and, worst of all, attacking spheres which track you diligently.
At the same time, you should avoid straying onto the roadside kerbing
as this reduces your speed and, in turn, costs you valuable time.
Time is extremely critical in this game!
Graphics are outstanding. The
track is very reminiscent of that in Pole Position but the background
scenery is much more colourful and spectacular, with a huge snow-capped
mountain range dominating the proceedings. The 3-D image is superb
- I particularly liked the effects of driving through the tunnels
- and scrolling is smooth and completely flicker-free. The theme
music is excellent too and, according to the cassette inlay, is
by Yekao (Yek - who?).
Now for the bad points. Firstly,
there just isn't enough time to complete each stage. You have to
drive flat out all the way in order to have any chance at all, making
it virtually impossible to avoid the spheres - especially when you
go blazing round a comer and smash straight into one before you
get the chance to see it! Also, control could have been better.
You have no brakes and can only slow down by decelerating, which
isn't a lot of good when you need to brake in a hurry to avoid an
oncoming obstacle. On top of that, you have to keep the joystick
pushed forward at all times to maintain speed. This severely hampers
your left/right movement and doesn't do a great deal for your out-manoeuvring
ability either! Why not use the fire button for accelerating and
decelerating as this doesn't get used during the game anyway. Finally,
you do not score any points nor is there any record of distance
travelled, no average speed, no readout whatsoever. Where is the
incentive to play the game again, I wonder?
To sum up, ELEKTRAGLIDE is a reasonable
enough game which could be a truly excellent game with a few improvements
here and there. At the moment it suffers from looking much better
than it plays. Perhaps it's biggest fault is that it's so damn difficult
with no leeway for the novice gamester like myself. If you're the
type who struggles to make the grid at Pole Position then ELEKTRAGLIDE
may well be beyond your capabilities.
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