<>@1 -(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-( *4@5 MANIC MANOEUVRE - PD REVIEW *3]5@6 by Cygnus A / PTK *1]1@1 )-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)- @3 Before anything else is placed on the page, I'd just like to say one thing ­ this game is HARD. Anyone who isn't a demon gamesplayer is wasting their time even looking at the page. (It's just my luck, isn't it? I've reviewed two games so far and they've both been dominated by me ranting on about how hard they are. You'll all think I'm soft or something, surely? I AM NOT.) Anyway, the game. Written by Dion Guy, it's a sort of of cross between PipeMania and Slider. You have a time limit within which you slide various pieces into position so that a worm type thing can go from one end of the level to the other. Due to the versatility of each of the differently shaped pieces and the random arrangement of them on each level, every game is different, which stops any tedium from setting in. Whilst the idea of the game sounds rather simple, in reality it is one bastard to play, demanding you immediately work out where to put each piece and implement it before the frankly anorexic time limit of 75 "things" (they're far too short to be seconds) runs out. Which tends to happen every time you only have one piece left to slide into place. Being a puzzle game, aesthetics aren't particularly important, but the pieces are drawn in a sedate dark green, giving a wholly relaxed feel to the whole cabbodle. However, the in game music is of a level of crapness only ever seen before on the title page of Manic Miner, pelting out a familiar tune as loud as possible with a bloody awful trumpet sample. Luckily, there is an option before you begin to swap this music for the seemingly non­existant Sound FX. @6[4 ^\/^\/^\/^ @1 The main downer for this game was not, however, the crap graphics or difficulty, but the complete lack of variety between levels. Considering the effort you have to put into completing a level, its a bit of a bastard to find the next level is exactly the same, bar perhaps the odd non­moving block which more than not don't even intefere with the game. This soon leads to the player burning the disk in a quite corner of their house out of sheer frustration, and really ruins what could have been, and should have been, a fine little game. *3 @2 OVERALL - 65%