Footman
                            =========
 
                      Reviewed by Eric Holroyd
                     ==========================

At last! A really good Pacman game on the Amiga. I raved about Cruncher Factory
and thought it was a great game but this one is even better. It has different
features though so I'm glad I've got both games.

At the menu screen you're offered a choice between "New Taste" or "Classic" as
well as "Maze Editor" (yes you can even design your own screens if the ones on
disk aren't enough for you!). New Taste is a quaint way of saying that it's a
different style of PacMan whereby you see him in "plan" view with his little
feet going hell-for-leather as he runs around the maze to escape the ghosts.
New Taste plays the same good game as Classic and in both cases you have the
ever-popular power pills which disable the ghosts for a while.

I don't suppose there can be too many people who wouldn't know how to play this
type of game but just in case there are, a comprehensive guide comes with the
package which explains everything about the game and also takes you through the
steps of designing your own mazes, a great feature in itself.
 
The action is fast and furious as you steer Footman around the mazes gobbling
up the dots and dodging the ghosts (contact with them is fatal). Taking a
power pill of course allows Footman to gobble the ghosts up for a limited
period (they become deadly again when the pill wears off). Bonus points may be
earned by eating the various pieces of fruit which appear randomly to tempt
you. It's the Garden of Eden all over again though, as the fruit always
seems to attract you away from the last bit of the maze, right into the path 
of the nasties. Happens to me such a lot...

This game has a lot of "intelligence" as the ghosts invariably make a beeline
for you just when you don't need them to and it develops into quite a battle of
wits as you get deeper into the levels.

Play it by yourself against the Amiga or two players may compete with each
other (very exciting!) and of course your high scores are written to the disk
for posterity or until someone else scores higher, whichever comes sooner.

There are some nice features in Footman such as the P key toggling Pause on and
off, S key toggles Sound FX on and off and ESC gets you out of a "hopeless"
game so that you may start again. F3 lets you see the high scores screen and F4
gets you to the Main Menu where you choose the number of players and whichever
level you want to start playing on. You may select any number up to 50 and it's
a great help to be able to do this as you can practise the higher levels before
eventually making your (hopefully) triumphant dash through the entire 100
levels. If anyone ever does this I'd like to meet them! My best so far is
80245 and up to Level 10 but then I've only been playing Footman for 2 weeks so
I'm bound to get better. It's a very addictive game and will keep me busy for a
very long time. I heartily recommend that you go out and buy it for  yourself. 

Footman is distributed by Computermate Products (02)457-8118. RRP $59.

ED: There's also a very good PD PacMan available - check Games Disk #3 in 
    the PD collection.

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