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Taking the player back to those almost stone age days of the very early 90 Optimus Apparatus is a rather brilliant throw back to games like Nexus on the Amstrad CPC 6128. You take control of a lone fighter which has to blast it's way across various randomly generated landscapes while always being mindful that the pesky force called gravity is trying to drag you down to a fiery doom. There really isn't much story beyond that. No really thats the game in a nutshell just fly, shoot anything that moves and quite a lot that doesn't move either.

But don't let the lack of a sparkling, well written storyline put you off this is one of those wonderful games that is simplicity itself but will keep dragging you by the ears back to your PC play it and just go that little bit further.

The controls are wonderfully simple. You use the A,S,D,W to control movement and the cursors to fire in various directions. The mouse is used for inventory, Esc to return to base or exit and upgrading control and really thats about it for the controls. But you really don't need anything more.

So the game itself...LOVE IT! Go out from your base kill various organic and not so organic critters to collect items and points. The items are then installed in your base screen or upgraded using upgrade points you earn by achieving high scores by...yes you guessed it killing those critters.
Add in missions, bosses and many different environments varying from rocky to organic to ice and you have a recipe for serious fun without the seriousness that far too many games seem to be chocked full of.

The good points of Optimus Apparatus are its simplicity, its size and its sheer playability which it has vast wads of. Of course it's retro appeal which dragged this gamer from the days of Manic Miner, Elite and of course Nexus right in and then held me at my screen for far too long by the throat. Of course the fact that the maps are randomly generated also makes for immense replay value.

But not everything is heavenly light. The graphics are dull. There's no other word for them but, dull. Flat colors and flat characters with absolutely no depth to the graphic content. Also a small thing but something that should have been avoided is the distorted graphics at the top of the screen where one of the user interfaces sits in the base screen. In the past things like this were somewhat understandable considering the limited computing power of the time but in this day and age...come on clean up your coding and get rid of that before you charge people for this game.

And if that wasn't bad enough the sound is...well remember all those games I've mentioned so far? They had better sound in most of them. After less then a minute playing I turned the sound on my PC off completely rather than allow my ears to be assaulted by continuous "bloob", "pop" and "crunch" noises. Most breakfast cereals make better sounds.

Is it worth the download and the fee? Yes. But not for the way it will dazzle your eyes or ears, because it simply won't. What it will do those is dazzle you with countless hours of mindless gaming fun.

My score.
4/5 Losing one point for the less than enjoyable graphics and sound.

Learn more about this author, Harper Gallagher.
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