@3 By: Microstyle Year: 1990 Price: £9.99 Cass/£14.99 Disk @1 There are four 'preliminary' levels, you see, and they all take place in completely different settings. There's Hyde Park, The Ice Caverns Of Freezia, The Forests Of Vegatabila and the Atomic Mud Mines. You can choose to play these levels in any order. There's a fifth level to play once you complete those. THE LEVELS (And how far I'd got in each of them) ========== Level One - Hyde Park --------------------- Three seconds into his adventure, a huge salvo of laser bolts narrowly miss our hero. Having recovered from that shock he spots a robot heading towards him. Yikes! Opting to jump over it and climbing a ladder to the top of the screen, Rick is alarmed to find the robot coming up after him. Luckily a rogue laser bolt takes it out. Upstairs, Rick crawls under a nasty- looking spark thing, flips a switch at the side of the screen (disabling a missile launcher blocking the exit) and heads off to the right. A few more dead robots later, Rick flips another switch, activates a lift, jumps on, ducks to avoid another missile and picks up some extra ammo. He then dispatches a few more robots and scales a pipe, only to have his clogs popped by a missile he hadn't spotted. Level Two - The Ice Caverns Of Freezia -------------------------------------- It's a bit chilly in here, but Rick doesn't notice the cold as he zaps a guard, dodges a falling icicle and chucks a grenade at a couple more soldiers. He then weaves his way round a few more guards, past a clockwork bird and slides uncomfortably along an icy platform. He switches on a lift, jumps onto it, leaps off at the top and... Oh dear, gets impaled on a pointy thing. Level Three - The Forests Of Vegatabila --------------------------------------- Rick finds himself in a jungley bit, with a gorilla heading straight for him. He shoots it. Deftly leaping over a rolling boulder, he finds himself with a choice - off to the right, or up? He goes up. No real problems here as Rick takes out a couple more gorillas and shins up a 'column'. He spots a launcher on the right of the screen and ducks in the nick of time as a poison arrow whizzes over his head. Laughing quietly to himself he climbs up a bit further and... Oops! Treads on a sharp stake. Level Four - The Atomic Mud Mines --------------------------------- Rick jumps over a couple of runaway barrels, clears away a few guards with some carefully-aimed grenades, jumps down to the bottom of the screen (avoiding the missile launcher of course) and flicks a switch. Nothing happens. He jumps blindly onto the screen below, landing on a moving railway truck. He rides to the end of the line on it, jumps off and climbs further downward. Then, just as things are looking up, he walks straight into a jet of flame. And dies again. As with it's predecessor, this game is hard. On top of the huge array of cunning booby-traps and the continuous onslaught of baddies, you've also got some pretty dodgy collision detection to cope with. It's a vast improvement on the original's, I'll agree, but I still get a bit teed off with being wiped out by a boulder that seems to be miles away. As for Rick, well, he's still the highly-talented little chap he always was. He can run, jump, duck, crawl, punch, shoot, lob grenades, and still manage to look cute 'n' cuddly at the same time. What a guy. Mind you, he needs to be pretty versatile with the odds he's up against. Right from the word go he frequently finds a boulder heading towards him, looking alarmingly hefty. Later on there are icy floors, lifts (some of which have to be switched on), lightning bolts, missile launchers and, ooh, all sorts of things to cope with. They're never terribly obvious either, so he's almost always wiped out by them on the first couple of tries. After that it's a case of remembering where they are and avoiding them next time round. The general 'look' of things seem to have been spruced up since the first game. Rick 1 had a very monochromey appearance, even though it wasn't short of colour (if you see what I mean), but the sequel's got the rainbow stuff oozing out all over the place. There are plenty of sound effects too, beep-fans will be pleased to hear. So, just what is it about these Rick games that makes them so devastatingly addictive? Erm, well... Actually I've got a bit of a confession to make. I hated the first one. Loathed it. It was just too flipping difficult for me. However, Rick II had me absolutely hooked - I couldn't tear myself away. And what brought about this astounding turnaround? Well, it's still hard, but I reckon just a teeny bit easier than the first game. Not much, but just enough to keep you coming back for more rather than switching it off in frustration.@4 _________________ ______________ ___________ | | | | | GRAPHICS | 84% | Overall | | PLAYABILITY | 92% | | | VALUE FOR MONEY | 93% | 90% | | ADDICTIVENESS | 92% | YS | | | | Megagame | |_________________|______________|___________| @2 Diagnosis: More explore-and-collect frolics, but a whole lot better than the original. @1REVIEWER:@7Jonathan Davies