Hoverforce (1990)

Name:Hoverforce AKA Resolution 101
Number:172
Year:1990
Publisher:Accolade
Developer:Astral Software
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:5/5
Time:2 hours 30 minutes
Won:No (65W/59L)

Astral Software is an interesting company, another British group like The Assembly Line whose best work don't fall under the umbrella of what I'm trying to do, shooters, instead creating clever little games whose actual genre is relatively unimportant compared to how fun it is. Unlike The Assembly Line, I think that Hoverforce might actually be good.

In preparation for this game, I tried out their previous game, Archipelagos. It was a good game, what I could play of it. Sort of like The Sentinel, a strange vaguely FPS game. You play as some kind of alien who came to Earth to restore its environment, which you do so by deactivating nuclear reactors. Stopping you are energy limitations, radiation emitting trees, and some other baddies. Unfortunately, the game kept crashing on level 15, and I don't have the time to just brute-force it. Worth a try if you like weird games first-person strategy games.

In Hoverforce you play as a cop in a future dystopia overrun by crime. "It's 2050 A.D., and biotechnology has created a new class of terrorist." Street crime is controlled entirely by mutant crimelords, called Alterants. They've created an addictive serum called Aftershock which turns those that take it into mindless killers loyal only to the Alterants.

To stop them a task force of biotechnically enhanced pilots called Red Wasps have been created. The hovercraft they're to pilot is so powerful that normal humans can't use it. The task force, really just you, will "interdict supply runs. Terminate Alterants." Absurdity of the story aside, gotta give the writer some credit, this is perfect for the sort of action movie they were undoubtedly trying to ape, I can just hear it being played in a trailer just because hearing, THIS SUMMER, SYLVESTER STALLONE IS...HOVERFORCE. There's also some stuff from the leader of the Red Wasp Unit, Sheriff Stone, which mostly talks about how bad Aftershock is. He doesn't factor much into the game despite appearing on the menu. Incidentally, moving around on menus is very awkward, no smooth movement, you have to hold down a key for a moment, the mouse feels completely unusable for menus. (it's not point and click)

All that backstory? Completely at odds with the game. The city looks bright, cheerful and GREEN. How much greener could you get? This place is better than a lot of major cities now, roving gangs of drug addicts or not. The glorious Roland MT-32's soundtrack feels like it was taken straight out of some cheerful life sim, and there's no sound. Which is probably good, considering I'm in a hovercraft, giving out bullets like I'm getting paid for every bullet I shoot. Infinite ammo too, so it's not like there's a penalty!

The controls are weird. I used mouse, surprisingly enough. Left click moves you forward, right click shoots your active weapon, move the mouse sideways and you move sideways. There is no reverse. Weapons are select from F1 through F3, with the first weapon you get being a machine gun. F4 opens the map, which I don't know how to read. F5 switches between tracking the boss or the nearest shop, more on that later. F7 switches between music and sound. Which I did not figure out until Level 4.

Everything about this is just arcade-y, goofy fun. You have to collect a bunch of red balls, which give you money. As with all money pick-ups, which seem to be the only thing that drops from enemies, you run them over. Sometimes when you destroy an enemy, probably one of the flying ones, a little video plays on the GUI of the main enemy of the section making a strange face.

Speaking of enemies, you have two rough types in this first stage. Less mobile, Dalek looking fellows who don't really do much besides take shots, and then swift, flying enemies which also shoot back. Finally, there's the boss, a hovercraft which takes a lot of bullets. You need to get the red balls before you can kill the hovercraft. The AI the enemy has is interesting, it might be my imagination, but I swear they're actively trying to dodge me and flank me. Enemies spawn in a flash of lightning, sometimes you can see this.

As the game wears on the differences become clearer. The Dalek fellows can be divided into immobile, stationary targets and slowly moving targets. Flying enemies come in many varieties, from red saucers, to green saucers, to black saucers. And some kind of weird gray saucer the manual describes as a tracking device. Everything outside of the black saucers is simple enough to kill.

While it's not really special in the level design department, I do like the set up. Each level feels unique, with it's own challenges. Enemies slowly spawn in as you move around, while some are spawned in predetermined locations.
 

I just realized they capitalized every word in the sentence, like an amateur.

Now, this isn't all perfect. I have no real idea of how much damage I've taken despite having something on the GUI to tell me my damage. I assume as this big red bar depletes I'm closer to dying. Going over water or over certain ground items also kills you. There's no penalty, you just restart the level and you have a save anyway. Really, this GUI feels way too busy. It took me a while to figure out that the arrow in the lower right isn't the exact same as the compass. Also, pressing F5 shows you where either the boss or the nearest shop is. The radar above the directional arrow tells you where enemies are.

I'm not clear on what the deal with shops are. I couldn't find a weapon shop, so everything else was just an item+defense shop. The only thing I could buy were the shields, everything else I apparently already had. Dunno if that's what the game is supposed to be like or if for some reason this is a hacked version. Considering how it can get on my nerves doing something with all the items, I'm not about to find out.

To win, you need to get the number of red balls you're told to and then shoot the boss, he's invulnerable before then. You have to take him out in-between buildings; they just pop out of existence before he flies in. There's a number of buildings he has to go to before he's completed his run, the point at which you lose. I get what they were going for, but it all feels silly. It's certainly a twist on the usual, do X thing to spawn the boss. 

After finishing off the first level, I realize I have a headache. Great, it's going to be one of those games. A lot of titles with that Wolfenstein 3D way of doing things now give me a headache. Guess it's the bright colors. Or in this case it might be the awkward-looking 3D. Moves well, but the way things grow and shrink in size is just completely beyond me. I am not expending the effort I need to see these guys so far away.

There's an enemy here, can you spot it?

Level 2 gets considerably harder than the more casual way the first level did things. You have to pay attention to the horizon and the little radar constantly to find enemies and items. Good luck figuring out there's a flying enemy in the distance when it's just a little blip. It's very hard to track down the big hovercraft, and I'm noticing that without any sound, only music, I can't tell if I'm hitting something. (I did not figure out the music/sound thing until later) Bullets just go through.

Every 3 levels the boss changes. That's right, you kill the same boss three times. The first three have Johnny Psyclops, a one-eyed fellow who used to be the bad guy's aide before he used more Aftershock than he should have. Wait, more? The manual implies he's not quite as brainwashed as an Aftershock user should be. I don't know if this contradiction is intentional or not.

These would make great reaction images.

Level 4 changes things up considerably. The black saucers now don't seem to die. I just can't get enough red balls before the boss completes his run, resulting in a loss. And apparently I do have limited lives...great. Not that it matters with the save system. Oh, and I figure out how to get to the weapon show, F1, because that was hidden further in the manual long past the controls to everything else. And when I get there my heart sinks. I don't have enough money to recharge my shield and get any kind of decent weapon.

I should explain. You can't move from side to side, so you're only way of fighting enemies is to fly behind them or stand still. You could do flybys, but that really depends on your ability to reacquire a target in a game which already has trouble doing that. So my strategy has just been to do what you shouldn't do in any other FPS, stand around and hope you kill them before they kill you. And it was working, it worked against most enemies that weren't the boss, which didn't matter much. Now if I try that with the boss I'm going to get slaughtered. I've also discovered what seems to be the reason why most of my navigational equipment is in the shop, because it can get broken. Guess we're in a libertarian utopia.

The issue with weapons runs fairly deep. With a shield recharge I can still upgrade my machine gun to the second tier...but that doesn't seem to be a noticeable upgrade. The other two weapons, a cannon and missiles, I cannot buy even the cheapest option. All weapons are just straight upgrades of the last, apparently. I can't help but think if you have the 28k necessary to buy the best missile you do not need the missile. Now, the third tier machine gun does work better, but I'd have to go to the shop twice, once so I'm not spending the whole time pointlessly shooting at things, twice so I don't die at the end. I have to restart the game at this point.

While I wasn't burning through money, I wasn't exactly saving either. I had 4k at the start of the fourth level, and playing again I mostly just managed to get 6k. This was the edge I needed to win, but it was hard fought, and I'm not sure I'll be able to keep up with this arms race. I got 2k after winning this level, but it's a stiff incline to the cannons and missiles.

Level 5 is deceptively easier, the number of red balls you need is now reasonable, but it's a tedious exercise getting them, enemies never seem to drop them now and never seem to be around anyway. I also discover flashing red saucers, no idea if they're special in any way; and the shop has thrust upgrades, 9 of them, each costing 1k. No idea why I'd want those since my speed so far is more than satisfactory. If I had an automated targeting system, or say, the ability to sidestep, yeah, then I'd buy that. But more speed?

Level 6 is misery. Twenty balls again, everything moves 100 MPH and doesn't stand still long enough for you to hit them. With the added bonus of a large water area, did I mention you die if you stand still in water for long enough? Or the silver balls that get dropped which kill you instantly. Now the game also throws at you enemies which are high or low, and I guess the idea is to shoot them with a certain weapon or from a certain distance. Otherwise you can't damage them. So, I decide to cheat, giving myself more money via a memory editor.

The thrusts don't do anything, but the missiles. Oh, the missiles. The missiles are glorious. At first they felt like a cheat code, because that homing aspect is just so useful in this game. It's not the I win button I initially thought, because somehow enemies aren't just crushed, and even with the best missile launcher in the game I had just enough time to win this particular section. I needed to rush to the shop, buy the weapon and a repair, shoot every enemy, making absolute sure to pick up every red ball, follow behind the hovercraft, since he also drops balls. And I only win this by chance.

Level 70. No, that's not a typo. The game broke. It wouldn't let me have a little bit of mercy, so it broke itself. How the hell changing money connects to the level number, I'm just left perplexed. Something tels me that despite seeming okay on the surface, the game doesn't have that great a codebase. It was stable though, despite appearances.

Weapons:
I like the ideas of the weapons more than how they work in practice. Machine gun for laying down basic fire, cannons for when you reach heavier targets, and missiles fire rarely. Missiles being a cheat code isn't idea, but with how the game works, is appreciated. 2/10

Enemies:
The enemies in this game come off as too smart. That combination of them being more agile than you, generally taking a ton of damage, and other variables I don't understand makes tracking them down a nightmare. If the game had a better difficulty curve, this would be perfect. 5/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Each block of the city feels interesting, the design of them feel like the best cityscape that I've seen, chronologically. Their end result is tricky, because each level is in terms of enemies and item drops a highly evolving location that rapidly changes beyond geography several times over. Practically like an on-rails shooter, but with considerably more freedom. I would have liked it a lot more if I felt like I had just a little bit of freedom. 4/10

Player Agency:
In theory, the controls work well, mouse aiming, even if you can only move forward with the left mouse button. But it's all annoying, the function keys feel unnecessary when nothing below is used, menus don't work, the GUI takes a long time to get used to. 4/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
I kind of like the bright cyberpunk aesthetic they went for, but moving around in this game is headache inducing. 2/10

Graphics:
The sprites are nice, but the deformation going on in this game is just so awful for visibility. The 3D is fine, not great, but I've seen a lot worse. 3/10

Story:
Apparently the story shifted between platforms of the game, so it's just your token excuse plot. 1/10

Sound/Music:
One music track, no sound. It's weird, it's not a bad music track, but it doesn't fit. 2/10

That's 22. Or the fourth best FPS of 1990. It's interesting, but not a very good game when you get into it.

With that, 1990 is over. As I said back when I finished the '80s, the period of 1990-92 will have one best of list. Its actually funny, looking at these games. 1990 has some decent candidates for best, 1992 does too, but 1991 looks kind of dead. The games for the upcoming year are kind of...not great. Obviously we have the Id titles and Midwinter 2, which I'll be replaying, and then...uh...some Japanese games I guess. Most of the other titles are either really obscure or stuff I already covered and didn't care for.

Day of the Viper

Name:Day of the Viper
Number:130
Year:1989
Publisher:Accolade
Developer:John Conley & James Oxley
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:3/5
Time:6 hours
Won:Yes (43W/48L)

I've been waiting for this one. A lot of people have said some very interesting things about this game. An interesting blend of action and adventure, and many comparisons to System Shock abounded. For such an important title I should check on Youtube to see which version I should play. the DOS version looks interesting, but it is 1989 and PC Speaker is still very common...and its Slaygon again. Except now we have slightly more complex combat. It seems like the Atari ST version was the primary platform, but after having failed to run that, and having had a text display error in the DOS port, I decided to run the Amiga version. Only, two of those didn't work, so it was back to the DOS version. Despite seeming crap, this game was actually fun.

The game tries to have a complex intro to introduce the game, well, the Amiga version did, but it just feels slow. My ship is somewhere out in space and somehow its been horribly damaged. This is the copy protection. Solving that the game gives me the real plot, in the Parin system, the defense base was attacked by an enemy, presumed to be allied with GAR, I think a hostile robot. Because this base was developing weapons and shield research this was the reason why, and I have to go in as a last ditch effort, and using floppies found around the base, reactivate the place's defenses. Easy enough in theory.
GAR, as explained in the manual, was a biotechnical robot AI, something in an assault vehicle that can think. Unfortunately, the design process created something that had pain on thinking and it went mad and decided to take out the human race. Because it was more intelligent than humans, he developed more powerful weapons and things haven't been going too well for the Sun League. This is where the game starts.

The game, pretty much as it opens

Once inside the game proper, I see that the interface has thankfully been simplified somewhat from Slaygon. Its down to map, radar (show more of the map for a slight power charge), gun and shield. The general gameplay loop is mostly unchanged, endless maze, key and door puzzles. The colors blue, green, yellow, red, white serve as an indicator of how powerful something is. Several defense items are no longer inventory items, and instead appear like upgrades in a menu. The game calls these circuits. There are also special attack items, which deal set damage to enemies. In addition to the usual health and energy recharges, you also get toxic waste, which recharges energy but hurts you. As health slowly heals, and shields deal with most problems, this isn't that bad a deal.
Keyboard commands are rare, but necessary. Home, my screenshot key, pauses, and I can only continue by pressing a different key. Otherwise its the same as Slaygon, annoying mouse only controls.

One of the more common enemies, there isn't much trouble finding their target point

Its combat where things have obviously changed for the worse. Its now a real-time affair, and enemies follow you, and attack from multiple directions. There are like ten enemies near the start of the first floor and all of them seem difficult to kill. Seems to be like Dimensional Fighter Epsilon3, where I don't know if there's a spot I have to hit or not, and because they're moving, I'm missing. Weapons overheat too. Guess I don't want a remake of that game with mouse controls then. The first time through I nearly bite it.
Gradually, things appear clearly, enemies have foreseeable patterns, and the real problem appears. Mines. Randomly placed like items, these can hurt you, teleport you, or worst of all, cause you to move around erratically for a few moments. That last one can and has resulted in a chain of setting off those mines. Of course the defense items help, but as the game's bigger, its a longer time before you find though. Later on they start damaging circuits or the map, which is where the real hurt starts. You get spare circuits and general repair items, but its an uphill battle. The game gives you grenades, but there are more of these than grenades and you might not even realize that the grenades are helpful if you don't read the manual.

The game is randomly generated. It seems like its just item/enemy placement that's random. Hence why the first time I played the game I nearly died. Its also slightly related to the version you play, the DOS version seems to be easier, but the weapon overheats faster.
So to recap, we have repair items, which heal damage taken if you get hit without a shield, energy charges, which come in many flavors and recharge energy, and then we have various stationary locations, that, with an item, can be used to recharge or heal. Later, there are items that upgrade one's weapons or shields. Also returning are various items that do something with the environment. Which yes, means that inventory management is once again a thing. This leads to the problem where some items, if their purpose isn't very obvious, does lead to tossing aside some items as useless. Later on there are dark areas, and if you don't figure out that a high color card works on lower color doors.

One of the later enemies, not quite the nastiest variations

The game has 25 smaller levels. The game divides these among 5 buildings, but all this means is that there's a certain block you can move around freely, whereas between buildings require one special thing. And yes, this does mean backtracking. You need keys to unlock doors, and to unlock certain crates. Passcodes are used to unlock special storage areas which have several items in them. The game even requires you to go through everything again once you reach the end, so it might be a wise choice to leave some levels for later. That said, the game is fairly fun as a dungeon crawler come FPS.
This leads to a problem though, as the game has a fairly linear layout at times. This game works like Blake Stone in that most of your inter-level transportation is done by an elevator, which you will have found fairly readily, or inter-building transport, which is usually at the opposite end of the map from the elevator. The three other areas of interest, computer room with the floppy, and the healing stations, are usually fairly removed from these locations, and often require extensive search. This isn't a problem the first time through, but if you need to find a recharge station its a pain in the butt.

One of the more boilerplate messages

One of the curious aspects of the game is the story. Its fairly standard, not especially well-written. Various terminals explain what happened before you got here, much like The Colony. At first I ignored it, because it seemed to me that it was more impressive that it existed rather than what the quality was. Basically, they were building weapons, noticed something funny on one of the planets, then got invaded. Where it gets interesting is that as I got nearer to the end, GAR and the robot army started talking on it. About how they missed one member of the team that was here. That changed things for me, and made me genuinely curious about the direction the plot was going to take.
Deeper into the complex, the robots started noticing that some of their number were disappearing. Its an interesting touch, since they're not on the lookout for a machine, they're only predicting a return attack by humans.

Every single red mark on the map is a mine, it is doable though

So this maintains my interest to skip ahead to the end section of the game, since that's what its building towards and I want to cut backtracking down as much as possible. Still clearing out areas as I reach them. This works well...until building 4 floor 5, or as the screenshot I've taken shows, the motherload of mines. And beyond that, there are enemies, just hordes of them. This is actually where the game shifts from being fun into being actually interesting. The last couple of buildings are quite the interesting challenge.

You know, a lot of the dungeon crawlers I've been playing seen to be focused on fetch quests...

GAR himself is in front of the master computer, having had found the prototype weapon and shield. That means for my not having the best weapon and shield, a direct fight is suicide. Luckily for me, he dies easily to 4 or so explosive weapons. Its at this point what the game expects one to do sinks in. Now, the final objective of the game is to get a floppy from each floor of the base, and then upload them to the master computer. I assumed that the game expected me to get all the floppies, but they were locked behind some of the later keys, and then after uploading them all to the master computer, return to the computers where these floppies were. The game does not expect you to do this, but it might be a better idea to head to the final floor quickly anyway, since the later cards are more helpful if you get them sooner.
The ending to the game isn't quite as interesting as the plot was developing towards, and a text crawl to end it isn't great, but its okay.

Weapons:
While the gun is generic, we get a bunch of single-use items that can change the tide of a battle. 2/10

Enemies:
While every enemy was basically the same, the targeting system made each new kind of enemy an interesting encounter. For a while, you might not even know if you could succeed in fighting one, and be forced to use explosives. 4/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
There is some genuinely nice dungeon crawling going on here. Unfortunately, the game expects you to walk through the entire map about three times, which is just insanity. 4/10

Player Agency:
Its nice that they removed some of the fat here, but interacting with things feels too much like work at times, and this game desperately needs keypresses for some of these actions, especially moving. I hit the wrong arrow quite a lot. 2/10

Interactivity:
Hey, I get a description of what it is I'm looking at, thus usually telling me what something does. This includes rooms too. Everything is simple otherwise. 2/10

Atmosphere:
Its a very 1989 game. What I mean is the VGA that doesn't look like VGA plus the PC Speaker sound evokes the area it was made in quite strongly. Its not so much that the game itself has an atmosphere, just that it carries a general atmosphere of an era I have a fondness for. 4/10

Graphics:
Its fairly simple-looking. It all works but its nothing special. The Amiga version is interesting, because the walls are blue, which is something I have said in the past wouldn't work. Shame I couldn't test that theory. 3/10

Story:
I was surprised by this. The manual felt poorly written as a military document, while the first bunch of computer texts were standard. Then GAR takes over and things got interesting. Not quite well-written, but interesting. 3/10

Sound/Music:
While it is PC Speaker, it isn't terribly intrusive. Sound effects only happen whenever something important happens, like a door opening or a lasershot. The Amiga version isn't really that much better, only having an intro tune. 3/10

That's 27, which for a game I didn't go out of my way to play, is a nice score.

None of the reviews seem to say anything interesting about the game that I failed to mention. Basically, fun if you want a dungeon crawler without that pesky map-making or RPG stuff. Otherwise not really worth playing.

Game 44: SunDog: Frozen Legacy

 

Name:SunDog: Frozen Legacy
Number:44
Year:1984
Publisher:Accolade
Developer:FTL Games
Genre:Space Simulation
Difficulty:5/5
Time: 4.5 hours

If I were to sum up this game in one sentence, I would take a quote from Ayreon - The Human Equation's last song. "Nothing much has changed since you were gone." From 1984 to 2020, next to nothing in the space trading simulation genre has changed. Which I suppose grossly oversimplifies all that has changed...the only difference between this and something released in 2004 is a better simulation of space. It all just feels...shallow. Everything just feels shallow. Thinking back to something else involving ships, Sid Meier's Pirates!, and I'm left wondering how Pirates! is just so much better. They shouldn't produce such radically different changes in my personal enjoyment. You basically do the same things in each, trade goods, shoot hostile ships...but Pirates has always been compelling, whereas your average space sim has not.

The game starts with the player having to find a hidden colony, founded by a space cult. When you find it, you have to get all the items the space cult needs to get a full-fledged city. Naturally, the player hasn't been given anywhere close to enough resources to do this, so the player needs to do the usual thing one does in games where they can buy goods, buy low and sell high.

This is where SunDog turns bad, HARD. You do the usual space trading sim thing, leave a planet with enough trade goods, whereupon you promptly get murdered by space pirates. Well, promptly isn't the ideal choice of words, more like slowly. See, the game doesn't seem to apply any logic to these space pirates, so if you have valuable trade goods in your hold, they attack, you don't, you're free to go. You can fight them, but the second I defeated one, barely escaping with my life, another one attacked me. This isn't confusion on my part, this is actually what happened. You can get a cloak, which I'm pretty sure is 100% necessary to complete the game, but the process of using it is really janky.

Fortunately, you can trade goods between cities...but at that point, I started to question what I was doing and why I was doing it. Barely making more than you put in is usually how that feels. You do this by driving your "pod" (which also serves as the in-ship cargo area) around the planet. There are quite a few city designs, and I'm sure I didn't see them all. The only problem is, they're not that interesting to look at and all they do is create confusion as to which place you get food and drink from...which is a concern, because you have a sleep and hunger meter. At least the banks and trade depots all look the same.

Sometimes you have to walk around on foot to get inside a building. This can result in meeting random people. Usually these are gangs of muggers, who I either told I had no money or got killed by. Sometimes I met people selling stuff, but I didn't find it useful.
There was also character creation at the start, basic stuff, point system, choose your name. Couldn't really tell you how much they affected the game, but I definitely wasn't going to start over and find out.

Of interest are some realistic mechanics. If you sleep outside a select few areas, you lose all the items and money on your person. If you leave your pod outside of a parking space, it gets locked off by the local police. Public transportation systems that teleport you to different cities and places inside the city. There are also a lot of little touches intended to make the game feel more real...but they ultimately felt hallow. It was cool to see them the first time...then it gradually got boring. The shoper keepers don't immediately attend to your needs, which in a video game isn't very fun.

Weapons:
Everything was a generic kind of weapon expected for a ship/person. 1/10

Enemies:
Everyone was just sort of there to screw me over. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
I guess because of the game's nature there are considerable friendly NPCs, but they're mostly just merchants. 2/10

Levels:
The towns all feel like they have no thought put into them, each new location is an exercise in finding the few places you need to go to just so you don't die of hunger. The planets are nice, until you realize you have to navigate through them. Its not a very positive experience. 2/10

Player Agency:
I despise the game's overuse of the mouse. Left click activates things, moves the player and items; Right click cancels or opens a menu. It works...but c'mon. You activate rooms by leaving your guy on top of it. 3/10

Interactivity:
Uh...I guess the inventory, the trading and the system consoles count...? I'm not sure what to put here. 1/10

Atmosphere:
There's something a bit surreal about seeing bizarre, alien worlds while you're basically an obese space trucker who eats burgers and drinks beer constantly. You're doing what amounts to an incredibly mundane job but with SPACE written in big bold letters. I wonder if regular trucking will have the same appeal if we ever leave this rock. 2/10

Graphics:
These are very nice for 1984. Everything looks like it should...however, if you focus on things for a second, they fall apart. The buildings are varied and sometimes very out there, but they aren't appealing to look at. Nothing is. Everything hurts my eyes. The ship is cool, but its very simplistic to look at. 2/10

Story:
Your thought lost uncle died in an "accident", and you inherited his ship and his obligations. His obligations being to build a colony for a group of space cultists. Aliens hate humans, humans hate aliens, and a bunch of stuff that doesn't matter if you don't read the manual. A point for the thought. 1/10

Sound/Music:
The version I played did not have any sound. Given a choice between no sound and no game, the choice was obvious. 0/10

That is 15, not bad for a game I hated. Same point total as Space Station Oblivion. I don't really feel like going through reviews for this, because I know they're nearly all positive, and because I just stopped caring. It might not be a bad game, but I feel that way.