Amiga

Future Wars

The abundance of routes to a swift demise and the policy of keeping the player in the dark not only breeds paranoia but also helps to keep the game alive as you progress through it, striking the happy balance between frustration and boredom. You honestly do not know what is going to happen next. Future Wars and the Cinematique adventure system may owe some of its design to earlier efforts such as the Sierra On-Line series – for example the character’s movement directed by the mouse pointer – but it is several miles further along the path to icon driven adventure enlightenment. Nice one.

Cinematique is an excellent system. The proof is in Future Wars which is a joy to play: graphics and sound are brilliant, gameplay is compulsive (if a mite easy - even Mr Wynne got a little way into it), and it even incorporates a good quick save/ load facility and a useful pause for taking a well-earned rest during the action bits. It's mechanics are similar to Lucasfilm and Sierra On-line games such as Indiana Jones, Zak Mc Kracken and Gold Rush but on the whole it looks and sounds much more polished. Future Wars may be a bit linear but the next release is claimed to be less so: personally I can't wait to get my grubbies on it. Meanwhile, be prepared to have a really good time defeating the Crughons.

W Future wars hen it comes to producing the fabled ‘Interactive Movie’, all credit has so far gone to Cinemaware. With sophisticated graphics and sound, titles such as Lords Of the Rising Sun and Defender Of The Crown wrote their own page in the annuls of software’s history. Unfortunately everything with these games followed a set path with one or two ‘movie’ interludes. On the other hand, American software house Sierra have been beavering away on their own style of interactive movies, namely the Police Quest and Space Quest series. Though the graphics and sound were on the poor side, Sierra products featured animated sequences following on from player actions, spiced with humour and puzzle elements. Future Wars takes off from where Sierra apparently stopped. It is almost second generation in much the same vein.

This potentially excellent game with a decent plot and stunning graphics is let down by the over-picky game system. Even so it is a good game and worthy of a close look. The system of the 1990s? It certainly has the potential and, with a little tweaking, could well be.

I quite like the Sierra games, but Future Wars was easier to get into. To begin with, the puzzles can seem a bit strange, but some of them are fairly logical, and it'll soon click. It amazed me how big the game actually was: I have played it on and off for quite some time, and I am still finding new areas. Overall, Future Wars is a perfect entry to this genre, and is worth considering.