It Came from the Desert

"It came from the desert" is a very hard game... However, the difficulty is well compensated by its excellent atmosphere! Its real-time living world gives you the impression that your goal has a meaning. Your actions alter the course of things that happen. For instance, if you do not show up on a meeting with someone, that person can get angry and refuse talking to you (and saying there was a giant ant in your way won't help). The action part of the game is as difficult as the adventure one. Your battle reaches an epic scale after you warn the authorities. Tanks and aeroplanes will fight along with you, against the thousands of giant ants, and you will have just one small opportunity to win. It isn't like any ordinary puzzle-solving adventure.

It goes without saying that It Came From The Desert is extraordinarily polished. The sections all interlock fluently, whilst the graphics, as ever, are excellent. All the townsfolk you come into contact with appear as large animated stills, whilst the locations are authentically put together. The sound adds to this, with a suitably eerie tune for much of the time which changes as you visit other locations, for example to country rock at the bar and the radio station (KBUG), and hoe down violins at the various farmsteads dotted around the map. I could tell you about there being over twenty locations, and how large amounts of the game play randomly, but you have probably got the picture by now - It Came From The Desert is Cinemaware’s most complete game yet. All this and you get to see decent Americans terrorised too!

Die Programmierer haben es diesmal großartig verstanden, die zahlreichen Action-Einlagen logisch mit der Handlung des Abenteuers zu verknüpfen. Die detailreichen Grafiken gehören mal wieder zum besten, was der Amiga zu bieten hat, wen stört es da, dass das Scrolling hin und wieder minimal ruckelt? Und die Musik? Von imposanten Horror-Hymnen bis zum Blues der wilden 50er ist alles vertreten! It Came From The Desert ist ein technisch perfektes audiovisuelles Erlebnis, das mit viel Witz und Einfallsreichtum Filme wie „Tarantula" oder „Formicula" auf die Schippe nimmt.

This is the best combination of adventure, strategy and arcade genres since the classic Rocket Ranger, also from Cinemaware. Some of the arcade sequences are great games in themselves - I particularly like the hospital scene where your run and hide from the chasing nurses and doctors: zipping around in the wheelchair is hilarious fun! The adventure itself is superb with a classic B-Movie storyline and typically slick Cinemaware presentation to heighten the atmosphere - the giant ants are so well animated, they're scary! With each new game the course of events is slightly different and therefore never predictable. Of course there's the inevitable disk access and shuffling, but it's not too intrusive and all pretty rapid.

This game could have been the birth of a whole genre! But unfortunately, Cinemaware disappeared a bit later and other companies didn't adopt this concept. Maybe they were too afraid of failure...

This is the closest Cinemaware have come to producing their interactive movie. The whole feel and atmosphere of the subject material has been caught excellently and, unless you are playing with one drive, it moves along nicely. The arcade games are simple, but it is the adventuring side of things that really keeps you at it. Good stuff, but only if you have got the upgrades.

Mit trister Tricktechnik, schaurigen Schauspielern und krankhaft knapper Kasse zauberten die Regisseure der 50'er Jahre Werke wie "Tarantula", "Formicula", "Godzilla" und andere "-lalas" auf die Kinoleinwand. Heute erschüttern diese munteren Machwerke mit ihren Knet-Monstern eher das Zwerchfell als den Zuschauer. Der billige Science-fiction-Horror wurde inzwischen von der Cineasten-Gemeinde zum Kult erhoben: so schlecht, daß schon wieder lustig. Diesem Charme der "B-Movies" konnten sich die Cinemaware-Programmierer nicht entziehen und entwickelten ein Strategiespiel zu diesem Thema.

It Came From the Desert has a style of its own, making good use of dramatic music and sound effects. Occasionally you're challenged to mini arcade-style games in the form of side scrolling, overhead, or target shooting stages. These are generally fun, especially the gory stages that require you to save people being eaten alive by ants! The controls in the side-scrolling levels are pretty lousy, but even when the ants prevail, you never actually "die" - you just find yourself back where you started. You can save your game at any time, but after a while the action gets tiresome. Most people probably won't make it to the end, but fans of old monster movies will appreciate the work that went into this unique title.