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
I remember that the sampled sound effects sounded really impressive when I first heard them (I had just upgraded my XT to 512 kb ram).

The Bad
A control system designed by a sick mind - this has to be the only sidescrolling action game using nothing but the function keys (!) to control the main character.

The Bottom Line
A Conan-esque character walks around slaying his enemies in the traditional sidescrolling beat-em-up style. You know the drill - except for the control system, which is alien.

The Good
The digitized speech at the title screen is... cute. The sprite graphics are done well, if a bit cartoony.

The Bad
Gameplay is done with "icons", which can be selected with the joystick, mouse, or function keys. For example: To move your character to the right, you press/select the right arrow icon. To swing your sword, you select the sword icon. This would be appropriate if the game were a turn-based strategy game or something--but it's not! It's a weak action game. You'd think that you could simply move left, right, etc. and hit a button to swing your sword, but you can't. You have to use the "icons" for everything.

It's the stupidest control system I've ever seen for an action game.

The Bottom Line
It's a sheep in wolf's clothing. Avoid it.