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{subhead} Genetic Species{def}{p}
Review by Neil Williams
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Genetic Species is a 3D first person perspective shoot'em up and puzzle
game. It's not a full 3D game - each floor of a level is at a single height,
with lifts to move you between each floor. This means that the 3D engine is
simpler, and there is more CPU power free. A game like Quake uses a full 3D
engine, in which you can look around, up & down, and levels can be spread
over many floors which you can even look between. While Genetic Species
doesn't have these sort of visuals, it does use the extra power available
from using a simpler engine to pack in as many special effects as possible.
While in Quake an explosion looks like a shower of bricks, in GS you get a
full colour realistic fire ball. You haven't lived until you've run through
a room of exploding canisters lobbing grenades at alien-looking face
huggers...
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There are some interesting twists to the gameplay in GS. You don't stay as
the same character all through the game. You play the part of a Bio-Shifter
- a device which takes over the body of other characters in the game. You
start at a corporate base on the moon, in the midst of many corporate wars,
and every human, cyborg and robot has an electronic implant which you can
use to control them. This is a huge part of the game, since some characters
have higher security clearances than you start with, and the huge armour
plated cyborg you need to smash through a heavily guarded room simply
doesn't have the hands to hold a key or security card.
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You take over a character by firing a Portable Probe Device (PPD) at them
after stunning them. The PPD can also be used to see around corners and down
dark corridors as it's travelling - although it moves at a fair pace and
steering it around corners is a bit difficult. You can sometimes stun a
character by firing the PPD into them a few times, but since you're
vulnerable while firing a PPD it's far easier and safer to use a stun weapon
like a tazer. And yes, GS have some magnificent weapons! You start with a
.44 pistol, which tends to attract the security guards thanks to very good
AI which lets characters call for help, and hear distant noises. You can
also collect a silenced .44, much improved but still a little weak for
dispensing some of the bigger bad guys around. But that's where the bigger,
more interesting weapons come in. Like the industrial drill. There's at
least 14 weapons in the game, including the fire axe, and they cover such
areas as grenades, rifles, mines and laser mines, rocket launchers, flame
throwers... and more than enough varieties of bad guy to waste with them.
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But the game isn't all shooting (or slicing or burning). There are puzzles
to solve, including some secret puzzles you can activate to get hold of
extra power ups. There are disused tunnels and corridors which don't show up
on the level map.
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The game uses a simple 3D idea, but adds to that a load of incredible
effects. There's almost no big pixels to be seen anywhere, even walking
close to a wall the texture maps stay fairly good. It's also very fast, even
on AGA. As a comparison, this game runs system friendly on an intuition
screen many times faster than AlienBreed3D 2 does by killing the system, and
GS species is far, far more detailed. Also, although the box says the game
needs AGA, it doesn't. The 200MB intro animation will only play on AGA
machines but since the game itself uses RTGMaster, you can play on any
Picasso96 or CyberGraphx supported card. This game runs very well on a
PicassoIV! It is limited to 256 colours and a 320x250 pixel resolution, but
looks fantastic none the less. Audio is done via AHI, so if you have a sound
card you can enjoy 16bit effects to go with the atmospheric background music
which is played from the CD. I'm not sure whether my CD is damaged, or if it
came from a bad batch, but on the last few tracks there's an audible click
through the music.
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The game sounds good so far, which it is, but there are some problems.
Firstly, there's only one save game position. And to save to this, you need
to be at a terminal - many of which are dotted around the levels, but when
you /really/ need one they never seem to be close enough. It might have been
better to not have terminals in the game, and just bring down a menu via the
escape key or similar. Other games do this, if not for saving then for
altering the screen mode. Also, the only way to get out of a situation where
you can't die and you can't get to a terminal is to perform a "quick exit" -
i.e. to quit the game immediately. You need to press escape and ~ to do
that, by the way. Not something that jumps out at you, and I did reset the
machine at first since the usual escape, shift-escape didn't work...
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But even with some tiny flaws like that, the game is still excellent. If you
can't decide between this and Quake, then get both. GS is a very different
game, and so much faster. Recommended.
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{bold}Created By{nobold}     : Marble Eyes, {link http://www.marble-eyes.dk}http://www.marble-eyes.dk{end} , and{p}
                 Vulcan Software Ltd. {link http://www.vulcan.co.uk}http://www.vulcan.co.uk{end}{p}
{bold}Available from{nobold} : All Amiga dealers{p}
{bold}Requirements{nobold}   : AGA, Picasso96 or CyberGraphx (AGA for intro){p}
                 68020 CPU or better{p}
                 8MB or more fast memory{p}
                 2x or faster CD-ROM drive{p}
{bold}Media{nobold}          : One CD, does not require installation.
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Graphics      : 96%{p}
Sound         : 90%{p}
Playability   : 93%{p}
Lastability   : 92%
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Overall       : 95% {bold}** AIO GOLD **{nobold}