Barbarian

The Good
Duh. You press keys, a bloke on the screen walks and suddenly - without no warning at all! - a rock falls on his head and he dies. Aliens, schmaliens - THIS is the ultimate in nerve-tingling suspense! All those pussies talking about these new 3-d games like The Thing and so on just have no idea what REAL suspense means - I can't believe somebody'd call a game suspensful when he knows EXACTLY what will happen when he presses this or that button. That's the whole IDEA of suspense - that you DON'T know what will happen next, that when a monster jumps out of nowhere you can't just press a mouse button and kill him! It's not like that in real life! And look - with all the technological advancements those games just can't reach that level on which this game is operating. All this game needs is a barbarian and a monster at the other end of the screen who doesn't even MOVE. You press F4 and the barbarian walks towards the monster, who then begins slowly - SLOWLY, like the advance of creeping death - to walk towards the barbarian. The barbarian has a sword with which he could with ease kill the monster - but does he? No, that'd be just primitive. That'd be something straight out of the Thing or that Aliens movie. No, no, no - in THIS game, the barbarian with his sword walks on and you press some key and instead of hitting the monster with his sword the barbarian suddenly stops and jumps in the air and the monster kills him dead! Pure genius.

The Bad
I thought it was a shame that when you die in one screen the game doesn't start anew but lets you resurrect somehow in that same screen. That's just not very realistic.

The Bottom Line
It was one of the first games I played. It taught me the use of function keys. It taught me that incredible frustration and ceaseless irritation is an irremovable part of computer gaming. I never got past the first four screens, but I still remember it with great kindness. I can't say that about any other game I've played.

The Good
The only truly cool thing about this game is the nice "barbarian!" digital sample at the beginning, which baffled me at the time.

The Bad
Everything, starting with the horrible, horrible control system, the completely ridicilous sound effects and on top of it all, the graphics suck. This game simply is NO FUN AT ALL!

The Bottom Line
Stay away from it!

The Good
As far as I can remember, Barbarian is the first game that created some sort of gaming community and sent the Amiga 500 to real stardom. First the packaging is luxurious: a hard box with beautiful artwork which had to be the model of all Psygnosis games for many years to come. Introduction seems basic today, but at the time the lighting bolt FX and sound of the first screen was truly astonishing. Most important, and what made the success and legend of Barbarian is its atmosphere: diversity of monsters and available weapons, beauty of the graphics, originality with sounds and original gameplay with great response with the not-that-precise Amiga's mouse are the many ingredients that make the game a must have for an Amiga fan. In my opinion, only Prince of Persia was able to enhance such originality.

The Bad
Though the game presents a great range of characters and graphics, it is a bit short for a top of the joy player.

The Bottom Line
A platform game with all the details of a D&D adventure... as a barbarian. Great graphics, beautiful sprites, good gameplay, incomparable atmosphere.