Knightmare (Activision 1988)

The first of two games based on the British TV series. The second was a Dungeon Master style romp based on the Captive game engine and as such was rather good. This is a more closely observed version of the TV show, but suffers dreadfully from being so. The main problem with the game however is its appalling interface. Controlling your character is with the joystick, however all other operations are controlled with the keys. And annoying this is indeed. Without the manual I had to first work out which keys did what, which wouldn't be a problem other than to do something you first of all need to chose an operation by pressing say 'T' for take. Then you have press enter/return and select what the object is, 'R' for rock for example. However the operations are limited and you quickly become frustrated. After half an hour of wandering round the first two rooms, unable to excape from my cell, I ended up punching the old man I was imprisoned with. He died, turned into a demon and killed me. Great. Graphics are nothing special but are clearly presented, the book idea for moving in between rooms is novel if it does reduce the screen size. Sound effects consist of whibbly theme tune and some generally poor spot effects. One thing I did notice is that some of them are well used however; I was quite pleased to discover drips from water falling from a wall resulted in the sound effect of them plopping on the floor. I found this game just to frustrating to play properly, but I'm sure if you could become 'one' with its mindset there might be some enjoyment in here somewhere.

Zogging Hell Rating: 6/10

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Cheats:

Not known.