     | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
On the one hand, there's
Agent X. On the other, I,
Ball 2. What are we talking
about? Music. Agent X's
five channel 48K theme
music (which really sounds as if it was
composed for a film or something) is
the smartest piece of sound on the
Speccy. I, Ball 2's title track is the
worst. A completely crap melody with
odd 'drum', er, 'beats' thrown in at
random, it's guaranteed to reduce
passers-by to tears.
Luckily a quick stab at the fire button starts the game instead. (Phew.) Breaking with the tradition of sequels, it's substantially different to the scrolling original. Here, the ball with the I has to bounce around twenty single-screen levels, shooting things and finding valuably informative ball artefacts. Yup, basically, you play a rotund archaeologist with a gun. 'Insanely difficult' is the phrase that leaps to the lobes when describing I, Ball 2. To enjoy the game, firstly throw away the instructions. Secondly, adjust to the unnervingly random way you progress through the levels. (When you complete screen one, it doesn't necessarily follow you'll go on to screen two.) Then spend ages on a screen and get killed about six hundred times before you twig certain things only happen at certain times. For example, objects blocking passageways tend to explode at t minus seventy seconds (as those nice chaps at NASA have it). Next, take a course in muscular control. The game is awash with inertia, momentum and other gravitational features, and often urges you to bounce through gaps that would tax an outrageously malnourished silverfish. But at least it's fair, in an unforgivingly harsh sort of way. This doesn't stop you from shouting juicier alternatives to the game's sampled 'Oh no!', but that's by-the-by. It's a game I'd pay good money for (actually I already have), but if you decide the same be prepared for some battering of heads against desks, both of these preferably being your own. [One of the "Ones That Got Away" reviews --NickH]
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jonathan Nash has kindly authorised this site | ||||||
| ||||||
| LOOKING FOR EX-YS WRITERS! Do you know where any are? | ||||||
| READERS NOTE: The original YS articles on this site were written many many years ago, and should provide no indication WHATSOEVER of the author's present writing style. Judge these people on their current work, not articles they wrote decades ago. | ||||||
| All original YS text is still copyright to their original owners, including BOTH publishers and authors. Permission has been granted to reproduce these articles by a few of these owners - if you see your work on here and would like it to be taken down, e-mail me and I'll do it straightaway. All other pages have similar restrictions - email me for more details. None of the pages on this website may be reproduced in any way, nor sold to the general public (i.e. put onto a CD-ROM) without the consent of Nick Humphries and the author of each article. If you want to include any of these articles on a site or a CD, contact me for more instructions. |
