Skrull

November 10, 2008

First, a confession. For review purposes I didn’t spend an hour playing this, just long enough to grab some screenshots (see below). You see I owned this game back in the day and still bear the emotional scars, and I wasn’t about to put myself through the agony of prolonged exposure again because this game is the worst. Truly awful.

They say first impressions are very important, so when the loading screen appears and is accompanied by a low-quality sample of Ride of the Valkyries that’s looped so badly it sounds like a scratched record, things aren’t looking good. Still, never judge a book, right? Wrong.

The game bears a passing resemblance to Psygnosis’ Barbarian with the icon driven interface, but there the similarity ends. While that game wasn’t the greatest, at least it didn’t have completely random (and terminal) obstructions, disappearing objects and reappearing enemies, repetitive locations, abysmal animation, and a slow and unresponsive control system.

If you choose to ignore the warning and actually play this steaming heap of ordure, here’s how I predict your experience will go:

Go left, fall down hole due to infuriating controls, go left, fall down hole that suddenly appears through a combination of dodgy controls and the fact that, well, it just appears under your feet; go left, get hit by dragon, go left, go left, get hit by dragon a few times, die. Start again, go left, fall down hole again, go left, fall down second hole again, get hit by dragon, go left, go left, get hit by dragon. Repeat until “combat” is mastered. Kill dragon. Spend five minutes trying to pick up key, accidentally move off screen, go back to find key has vanished, swear as dragon attacks again, die. Repeat, finally collect key, go through door, go left, go left, get squashed by falling slab that appears without warning and once activated is inescapable. Remove disk, break into a dozen pieces and flush down the toilet.

Graphics: Bland, repetitive and poorly animated.
Sound: Not much in-game sound to speak of, but judging by the appalling intro sample this is a good thing.
Gameplay: Frustrating; terrible design and dodgy controls combine to make this an exercise in patience and memory if you want to progress anywhere (which you won’t).
Amiga annoyances: Nothing Amiga-specific, it’s just generally annoying. There is an ST version which got a couple of reasonable reviews so may possibly suck less; as it stands it couldn’t suck more, anyway.

Overall: the worst game, and possibly the worst thing that I’ve ever seen. A big, fat, stinking pile of the foulest excrement.