ROBOCOP 3 --------- Copyright ©1993 by Scott English 39 +-+ 39 +-+ 39 +-+ 39 +-+ 39 +-+ 39 +-+ 39 +-+ 39 My favourite two genres for games/fiction and similar things would have to be medieval fantasy and cyberpunk science fiction. Robocop 3 fits very solidly into the second genre, placing you in the position of Robocop in a future USA where the corporations control most things, literally. As Robocop, you have to deal with orders from Omni Consumer Products (OCP) while following your prime directives, and upholding loyalties for Lewis and your fellow officers. Robocop 3 plunges you straight into the dark, cold and unforgiving atmosphere of a cyberpunk future. Everything is shown in shades of grey, metallic blue and dreary blacks. Piercing the gloom are the vibrant flashes of red and blue from police cars, but even these don't seem to be positive in a society that wants the police protection but not their intrusion. As Robocop, you definately feel that you are fighting for a people who don't really give a damn, as long as your helping them and not shooting at them. Virtual Reality would be an easy term to use when describing the way the game plays, and it is, in a limited way - from what my understanding of a virtual reality is. The only thing missing is that the player interfaces with the world in a way that is removed from that world - that is, you use either the keyboard, joystick or the mouse. You're not actually immersed in the world either, but the 3D graphics that are used do a damn good job of creating that effect. I preferred to use the mouse as my method of control, mainly because I haven't seen many "Action orientated" games that use the mouse well, so the idea was novel to me, and I wanted to see how it handled. There were a lot of teething problems to begin with, believe me. I commonly associate the mouse with moving a little pointer around a workbench screen with lots of icons, not with moving around a building shooting at people. The fact that the game is HYPER sensitive to the mouse didn't make getting accustomed to it any easier either, but in the end, I did come to grips with it and you won't get me using anything else when I play Robocop 3. The mouse just seems so easy to use for this game - the programmers, Digital Image Designs, have done a superb job in using this oft neglected interface. In fact they have done a superb job with the entire game which includes scenes for your to play Robocop walking around, driving a car or even flying a Gyrcopter - zipping in and out around the skyscrapers and buildings of DeltaCity is definately an adrenalin rush, especially when you have more mundane choppers chasing you in and out. All of this is in full 3D and goes at a great pace - not snail speed as you might expect (and thats on an unaccelerated A500!). If you are a fan of the Robocop movies then you will get a little extra kick out of this game because a lot of the scenes in it will be familiar such as the head of OCP, your Captain, ED209 and Casey Lang with the news - all of whom provide you with information about your new missions and jobs and provide background on what is going on. All the still shots are easily recognisable with the characters from the movies, though not the most brilliantly drawn. The animated sequences, while sometimes a little slow and long are quite good to - its a shame that there was no sound to accompany them - and some digitised Robocop "Thankyou for your co-operation"'s wouldn't have gone astray either. While in game, the effects don't stop. As with the stills, the drab, gloomy colour scheme is retained throughout the actual game, but is punctured with the bright green graphics from your computer displays - such as your targeting computer, and information displays - in particular I like the way your targeting computer zooms in on a particular target if you concentrate on it long enough, very classy. The one downer is that every single person in the game is merely drawn as a black silhoutte, but I didn't really mind that - it was part of the challenge, obviously, because it then becomes tricky to pick out bad guys from good guys in a hurry with guns firing at you and the possibility that you'll down an innocent if you get too trigger happy. This brings me to how the game works. You only have one "life", as most people put it. Instead of the standard system of lives or hitpoints etc, you have an efficiency rating, which begins at 99%. Generally bullets will reduce your efficiency by 1% for each time you are hit (and leave a whopping great bullet hole in your windscreen if you are in a patrol car at the time - which makes driving even more of a challenge). Killing an innocent (they're the ones with their hands help up in the air or more importantly, the ones that aren't shooting guns at you!), goes against your prime directives and cause your internal systems to freak out - reducing efficiency by around 20% a pop... not a good idea to start firing wlly nilly in a crowded room then. Of course if your efficiency gets down to 0% it's the scrapheap for you, though if you cop a grenade at anytime you're off to the robot heaven in the sky - which I think is a bit nasty because a SplatterPunk can easily hurl a grenade at you as soon as he sees you (which you then have to shoot out of the air(!) - which is made even harder if you happen to have your back to it, looking down the other side of a passageway). The difficulty rating is way up there. Many people may get discouraged easily because of this - which is a shame, because they really are missing out on a good game, but when you aren't very good and keep being terminated, the disk access at the end and start of each new game does get annoying. Not HD installable either, bummer. Robocop 3 is more of an experience then a game. When you overcome the difficulty hurdle at the beginning, you can really get immersed in the game and feel as if you are actually Robocop, and those people are really firing at you. The rapid banging of your gun just sounds so cool as you drop punk after punk. 39 +-+ 39 +-+ 39 +-+ 39 +-+ 39 +-+ 39 +-+ 39 +-+ 39