Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mcnc!thorin!unc!glassner
From: glassner@unc.cs.unc.edu (Andrew S. Glassner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: game review: Crystal Quest
Message-ID: <962@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 30 Jan 88 04:49:12 GMT
Sender: news@thorin.cs.unc.edu
Lines: 93

Today I received my copy of the new game Crystal Quest. 
I give it 5 out of 5.

The game is an interactive, 2d arcade-style hand-and-eye reaction
time shoot-em-up.  You're piloting a ship across the face of the Mac
screen, controlling its movement (direction, speed) with the mouse.
Clicking the mouse button fires a torpedo; pressing the space bar
fires a smart bomb (if you have one).  You begin in the center of
the screen, surrounded by an assortment of static objects: crystals
to get, mines to avoid, and bonus point flags to get (there might
even be a smart bomb or two in view if you're lucky).  You begin
to cruise around the screen to get the points and crystals.  When
you have all of the crystals collected, a hatchway opens at the 
bottom of the screen.  You fly into the hatch to collect bonus
points for time and then advance to the next level.  At certain
scores you are awarded an extra ship.

Of course, there have to be bad guys.  And there are plenty of them.
There are two portals: one each on the left and right side of the
screen.  The baddies come out of these portals and onto the screen.
Then they begin to wreak havoc.  There are 12 different kinds of bad
guys, each with a unique image and personality.  Some are not as
nasty as others; you start seeing meaner bad guys as you advance levels.
If any bad guy touches you, you die.  The baddies on the first few levels
aren't too hard to outrun, and they're not continuously aggressive.  As
you progress, they get more determined to come after you.  Some also
have the ability to fire shots of their own, of different types: you
must also avoid their shots or lose a ship.

There are a few things that make this game really special.  First is
the quality of the play and the interaction.  The game is principally
entertaining: the bad guys have personality, your goals are clearly
defined, and your options are limited.  It's not a game you have to
slowly decipher: it's plain, simple, up-front brute reaction time and
observation.  But wonderfully done.  The mouse controls not the position
of your ship but its velocity.  Swish the mouse quickly to the right, 
and your ship starts zipping to the right.  Swish left to bring the
ship to a halt.  The mechanics of this control are really fine; there
seems to be a very non-linear correlation between mouse speed and ship
speed, but I only say this because I've thought about it: it feels 
completely natural.

The graphics are very simple but well done.  Everything on the screen is
a simple, small, shape that is easily recognizable and differentiable from
everything else.

The game comes with over 300k of digitized sound support.  Every time you
shoot, or collect a crystal, or get a point flag, or bump into a mine,
or... well, every action in the game (by you or the bad guys) has its own
entertaining (and usually appropriate) sound.  There are some nice
surprises in the sound I don't want to give away.  But they're very well
done and completely integrated into the game.

Another special feature of the game is your control.  When the screen
begins to fill up with baddies and their shots at you, the Mac has simply
got to do more work than for a mostly empty screen.  The bad guys begin
to slow down a bit; so do their shots.  BUT, and this is most important,
your ship responds as always.  So the other guys get sluggish, but the
skills you build up by playing the game are not jarred when it gets busy:
your ship always responds the same way.  This probably wasn't easy, but
it was obviously a deliberate design decision.  It was quite right.

Players of Crystal Raider (shareware, a year or so old) will easily learn
this game; it's an enhanced version.  Some of your favorite bad guys from
Crystal Raider make a re-appearance in Crystal Quest, in the company of
several new nasties.

I've probably played about 2 hours total (which is a lot for a fast-paced
arcade game).  I've made it to level 29, with a score of 1540350.  The
box says that there are 40 different levels.  I don't know what comes
after 40, but it will probably be a long time before I see it.  The upper
twenties are HARD.  Luckily, you can gain back about one life per level
if you're quick (from the bonus points at the end), but you start losing
ships a lot faster than that in the upper levels!

I ordered from MacWarehouse, which is selling the game for $28 (I couldn't
find anyone else selling it in February's MacUser).  It's marketed by
Greene, Inc. of Monterey, CA.  The documentation needed to play the game
is on-line: brief but complete.  The box contains 1 800k disk containing
Crystal Quest, the sound file, a system folder, and a "demo" version of
the game you can give to your friends.  It contains some of the bad guys 
and ends after 5 levels.

I love this game.  The difficulty is well graded, there is tons of sound
and graphics, and the interaction is handled in a superb manner.  The
game is exciting, and I really enjoy driving my ship throughout the 
screen, avoiding static land mines, moving bad guys, and the bad stuff
they emit (new mines, torpedoes, fancy bombs, etc.).  

I give it a Perfect score: 5/5.

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Andrew Glassner    UUCP:decvax!mcnc!unc!glassner    ARPA:glassner@cs.unc.edu