Amiga

Wizkid: The Story of Wizball II

Wizkid är ett av dessa egenartade spel som man inte riktigt vet hur de skall beskrivas. Det börjar som en variant av Breakout men sedan utvecklas allt i de mest överraskande riktningar.

There are no two ways about it, this is a very strange game. Wizkid is the type of game that French programmers seem to churn out with monotonous regularity, but it's better than anything I've seen over the English Channel for a very long time. I'm not saying that it's fundamentally bizarre; it's just a cutesy platform game, but hiding within Wizkid's structure is a mischievous intelligence.

The colourful graphics and irritating tunes that pervade the game simply can't hide the fact that the people who wrote it were having wicked fun. Unheard of! Coders enjoying their work indeed – what is the world coming to! But the benefit to you and I is that we'll enjoy playing it at least as much as they enjoyed writing it, and possibly even more.

It's been five years since Wizball was thrust on to the games-playing world. The original was praised for its addictivity and playability, and even today it still holds up well against recent releases. Unfortunately, though, Sensible never wrote the Amiga version of Wizball, and as a consequence the conversion wasn't all it could have been. With a totally revised gamestyle, Sensible Software hope to put that right with their sequel, Wizkid, and amalgamate the old with the new for a modern day classic.

Wizard, Wizball and Nifta the Cat have been imprisoned in the turtle dungeon somewhere on Wiz Island. Fortunately, their recent offspring, Wizkid, escaped and, recruiting the player as his co-pilot, embarks on a mission to rescue them. There are nine levels to play through on Wiz Island, and each accommodates two different styles of gameplay: arcade and puzzle. It is possible to finish the entire game without touching on the puzzle element at all, but it isn't half as rewarding.

En potentiell klassiker som inte är riktigt lika bra som sin föregångare.

Was ist denn mit Sensible Software los? Wizkid hat überhaupt nichts mit dem genialen Vorgänger zu tun. Statt ausgeklügelter Action gibt's derb-dumpfen Kalauer-Humor - die spielerische Linie darf man getrost vergessen. Keine Frage, Wizkid ist ein außergewöhnliches Spiel, das (positiv ausgedrückt) zu neuen Ufern aufbricht. Meiner Meinung nach hat es dabei allerdings Schiffbruch erlitten. Wizkid kann man noch am ehesten ins Action-Adventure-Genre einordnen, obwohl es mit klassischen Vertretern des edlen Genres wenig zu tun hat. Zugunsten von diversen Pseudo-Gags versickert der Spielspaß im Mittelmaß. Die Geschicklichkeitsszenen mit dem "Kopf" sind trotz toller Grafik auf Dauer langatmig und öde. Die "Körper"-Etappen sorgen zumindest beim ersten Anlauf für dezente Unterhaltung. Hat man allerdings ein "Rätsel" gelöst, wird's bei den nächsten Versuchen beinahe zur Qual - man kennt's halt schon.