Galactic Warrior Rats

Now this is what call a real budget game: it costs ten quid, the price of old Spectrum or Commodore 64 fare, and it plays like a Spectrum or Commodore 64 game too, come to that. There's nothing particularly slick or clever going on, it's totally unoriginal, but it's just addictive in good old-fashioned 'leave your brain in neutral' style. The idea is that you play three rats, who were on board a spaceship. The spaceship crashed onto the surface of a planet and the reactor engine exploded, mutating the rats in question and killing everyone else on board. The rats discover that the planet they're now stuck on is ear- marked for destruction because it's so polluted, and that there's a countdown in progress (but luckily quite a long one).

To save their hides, the rats have to travel around the surface in their little, blobby looking attack ships, kill all the defence droids, and ultimately shut down the planet's computer complex. Every time a defence droid is killed it either drops a bit of dosh or a key, which is picked up on contact. The dosh can be used to upgrade the rats; weaponry, and the keys - as you'll have guessed -are for gaining access to otherwise unreachable areas. Scattered about the many levels are computer consoles which, when touched, will either show the rats a map of their immediate area or enable them to spend their collected cash (yes. in 'the shop'). Also scattered about (and to make the mazes that bit harder to complete) are warp tiles which zap the rats to other locations. The game plays with you controlling one rat at a time: if it gets killed, you switch to the next. And then the next. And then it's game over.

You've heard it all before, and you've seen it all before, and before playing the game I thought: 'Snooze city, I wish I was doing something else more interesting'. However, as is the nature with simple maze games cum shoot 'em-ups of this ilk, and like I said at the beginning of this review. Galactic Warrior Rats is spookily addictive. The bird's eye view graphics are basic and blocky, the scrolling is a tad on the flickery side and the sound isn't really anything to write home about either, but it doesn't really matter. Just like it didn't matter that Spectrum games of this type were rendered in seven hideously clashing colours and the internal speaker occasionally made funny beeping noises. Blimey, I've suddenly come over all nostalgic over my old Spectrum. I'd better not overmark Galactic Warrior Rats though, because a game like this might easily pop up on public domain, and that won't cost you diddly squat. Still, ten quid's not exactly going to break anyone's bank, is it? (Unless you're on the old 'Nat King Cole', in which case it's two weeks food money.)