Encounter!

The Good
Encounter is a 3-D shoot-‘em-up that plays similar to Battlezone. Now, everybody remembers Atari’s popular game back in the day; you commandeer a tank, shoot enemy tanks one at a time, and try not to crash into obstacles. It featured an infinitely large playing area and had vector graphics. Paul Woakes took this concept and expanded upon it. The game is split into two parts, but no matter which one it is, you are looking at the view from the cockpit, in which the most prominent feature are the warning lights at the bottom, indicating the presence of two enemies. A radar next to them displays any incoming dangers represented as a white dot.

In the first part, you are skimming along an open landscape littered with pylons, and your object is to destroy flying saucers that emerge from a white gate. This is done by maneuvering your craft until you are facing them and then firing a sphere. Saucers that appear much earlier in the game are cannon fodder, but later ones defend themselves by shooting back. There are even those that explode, sending a lot of spheres your way that are very difficult to avoid.

You can put the pylons to good use by ricocheting a sphere off them in an attempt to hit the saucers. Occasionally, a missile will appear out of nowhere and home in on your position, and you must quickly deal with it before it does any damage. Coming into contact with any projectiles means the loss of one shield, and the game is over if you have none. Once you have destroyed all the enemies, a black gate will appear and you can drive through it. If you don’t drive through this gate as soon as it opens, it will disappear.

The second part has you driving through a tunnel, avoiding spheres that approach you. When you have just entered this tunnel, the spheres take their time coming at you. They will, however, eventually come at you at the blink of an eye. If you touch any sphere, you also lose a shield and are jettisoned to the last landscape you left. When you have passed enough spheres, you are able to leave the tunnel so that you can tour the next landscape, and as soon as the gate closes, you are faced with the next lot of enemies. Navigation through the tunnels becomes harder the further you progress.

Do you know what I like in the game more? Having the possibility of a white gate opening right next to your craft, so that you can face it and shoot the flying saucer before it has the chance to escape. I like how the eight landscapes have their own color schemes and how some of them are set in space. (I think the second landscape looks brilliant!) Since you go back to the first landscape after all eight have been visited, this gives you the opportunity to “score attack” until you run out of shields. The graphical effects are stunning; the way the gates open to reveal the next landscape and that the player has to drive through them brings some realism to the game. The sound effects are also excellent, with different warning sounds letting you know what dangers you are about to face. There are three difficulty levels, and die-hard players may get the thrills at playing the hardest.

The Bad
I can’t think of anything bad about this game. No programming flaws here.

The Bottom Line
Encounter is a 3-D shooter set across various, beautiful landscapes and shares a lot in common with Battlezone; the only difference being the inclusion of tunnels you have to drive through to reach the next landscape. Woake’s game is also a refreshing change from the plethora of shooters that graced the Commodore 64 until the mid-Eighties. If you are not afraid of giving Battlezone a go from time to time, then this game is highly recommended.