Aquaventura

"The Rumours have been rife. Expectations have run high! For four year computer games players have been awaiting this, the release of the decade: Now, be still your beating heart, for here is... Aquaventura.
Battling alone against a powerful enemy race, you and your one-man ship must fight through eight danger zones, each swarming with alien things. The zones are connected by a tunnel which you must skilfully navigate while avoiding or destroying patrolling enemy craft. Make it through the tunnel and you are rewarded with energy and weapon replenishment ready for your battle in the next zone.
Featuring smoothly animated, filled polygons expertly combined with impressive 3D sprites, Aquaventura breaks new ground and proves to be well worth the wait Aquaventura: The damp patch in your software collection."

The blurb on the box really tries to sell it and set expectations high only to have them come crashing down once in the game. I have to say the huge square and colourful game box went a long way to separate me from my cash. Even the game manual has a huge back story to get you engrossed in the games lore and ready to do battle. The game is aimed at a 512k A500 config but an A1200 config has been used to play to give it a little fps boost.

The has a great opening intro taking up the entire first disc followed by a great title tune and truth be told, I would often fire the game up just for the title tune alone. Once in game, you are placed in a polygon world with vector bob enemies. There is not a lot to it. Firstly some alien generators which should be destroyed to stop aliens coming through. Then onto the solar power generators which then allow you to destroy shield generators around the pyramid. Once here you get a guardian to destroy, pretty much the most annoying fight of the level as the individual parts can be hard to hit. Once destroyed, its a tunnel ride to the next level. There are only eight levels and each one is mostly the same but with more things to destroy. Also in the level is an energy absorber which is best avoided and cant be destroyed.

It is not a difficult game. The aliens don't really damage you whilst you are moving but you do have shields which can take a number of hits. The biggest challenge in energy. It needs to last the entire level with no way to replenish. Weapons fire and engine thrust use it up so you need to be careful with how much you shoot especially in the later levels. I mostly ignore the aliens and just concentrate on the solar panels and pyramid making sure I have plenty of energy to get through the guardian stage which can be tricky as its difficult to aim and land shots whilst its moving. You get missiles and a secondary weapon during the main game but are not available during the boss fight. You do only get one life. once the energy is gone, so are you. Going after the aliens will boost your score but it doesnt matter much if you have no energy left to defeat the guardian.

Overall, it's not a bad game but It hasn't got much to keep you coming back for more. The 3d rendered vector bobs look like like the developer discovered a new gfx rendering technique and needed a game to shove them in. Completing the game awards you with an animation that even shorter then the death anim and doesnt even allow you to enter your highscore.

00:00:00 Intro
00:01:43 Title Music
00:05:41 Stage 1
00:09:04 Stage 2
00:13:11 Stage 3
00:17:02 Stage 4
00:21:17 Stage 5
00:26:26 Stage 6
00:31:10 Stage 7
00:36:40 Stage 8
00:41:30 Ending
00:41:43 Death