Stellar 7

The Good

• There's plenty of action in this game. You battle against a nice variety of enemies; there are flying enemies and land-based enemies, there are tanks equipped with a cloaking device, tanks armed with an electric force field that drains your energy when you touch them, spider-tanks that drop cobwebs in which you can get stuck etc. Moreover each of the seven levels/planets ends with a boss battle.
• At first I thought the game was somewhat difficult (the first few days I played the game I didn't get very far, only up to level 3 or something). But this is one of those games where you need to learn "the trick" (what it takes to advance) to beat a level. For example, which power-up to use against which boss. Find out what to do when, I liked that.
• Stellar 7 has good production values. The game (engine) runs smooth, it's graphics mode is VGA and there's Adlib/Soundblaster support. The graphics of Stellar 7 are convincing, they're a combination of 2D art (the storyboards starring Gir Daxon are wonderful) and 3D models (my favorite is the manta, just look how it flaps its wings). The audio is not bad, but also not very interesting.

**The Bad**

• The usefulness of some of the power-ups is questionable. The EEL-shield, the landmines and the supercannon are very helpful for beating certain bosses and the Cat's Eye (lets you see cloaked enemies) is fun too, but I don't think I ever had to use the booster- or jump power-ups. And when you use the Inviso Cloak your entire field of vision turns red, which makes it hard to see incoming laser fire.
• Sometimes it took me quite a while to shoot down some of these flying enemies. They're a lot faster than your tank and since you can't move the barrel of your cannon up & down they're often out of reach. This is a minor complaint, however.

**The Bottom Line**
A good action game with shoot 'em all gameplay - Battlezone style. Completely linear, without any customization or branching, but well executed.