Secret Service 56b/SSERVCD_56B.bin/Sinclair/Games/information/HighwayEncounter.txt

Text File | 1998-02-02 | 4KB | 55 lines

                          {UHIGHWAY ENCOUNTER}U  - Preview

Highway Encounter has a simple plot. You control a droid or Vorton, which has
the simple task of takin an explosive device from one end of a straight road to
the enemy base at the other. If the device is succesfully delivered then the
enemy advance will be halted and you will have won. You view the action from an
oblique aerial angle, seeing one complete section of read at a time. In all you
have a total of five droids under your command, but you can only directly
control one at any given time. The remaining droids are automatically programmed
to push the device down the centre of the road until they meet an obstruction
whereupon they come to a dead stop. The control droid is steered in a similar
way to the robot in Alien 8. To move in a given direction you must first rotate
until the droid is facing the appropriate way and then move forward. This is a
difficult system to come to terms with: the droid reacts as if subject inertia,
and it takes some time to accelerate to full speed and seemingly even longer to
come to a halt. At first sight the game looks very simple - so long as the road
ahead is clear the explosive device and automatic droids will make their way
down the middle of the road. They will only stop if their path is blocked, as it
frequently will be.  Most of the blockages are caused by large barrels and boxes
left lying around but very soon you realise that although these objects are a
pain the can in fact be put to very good use. You see, the enemy aren't just
sitting back waiting for you and your bomb to turnp up on their doorstep... they
have some pretty smart defence systems waiting for you. The first type take the
form of stationary mines, if you colide with one then you lose a droid and will
have to take over one of the automatic ones. The mobile mines are a bit more of
a problem, they slide back and forth across the width of the road and while you
can dodge them with the controlled droid, the only way of ensuring a safe
passage for the rest of your party is to block the mines in against the wall
with boxes or barrels. Generally the controlled droid can nudge objects along
the road, but it is often quicker to manoeuver them into place by firing laser
bolts at them. Sometimes more than one object can be moved at a time, but the
whole operation becomes a lot slower.  Beware of the objects that looks like
boxes but in fact melt when fired at. The laser fires in bolts of three blasts,
each blast sending out a sort of hairly bullet thingy which hits home with
devastating effect. However, after firing a burst of three bolts the laser
pauses briefly to re-charge and this can be a bit of a problem when it comes to
dealing with the third type of defence system - the enemy's droids.
The enemy machines come in all shapes and size, and some just seem to wander
about while others actively hunt for you. They vary in the way theymove, while
some droids are prepared to try a frontal assault and are easy to take care of,
others sneak up on you while their allies draw your fire. Clearing a path along
the highway becomes progressively more difficult. To start with, you find it
fairly easy to move items around to block the mines off, later on, not only do
mines appear in larger groups, but they move more erratically and your attempts
to trap them will be hampered by ever increasing numbers of nasties attacking
you. To make matters worse the game has a limit time for completion. The amount
of time remaining is shown by a bar graph on the lower part of the screen.
Within the same area you are told how many droid Vortons you have left and which
of the 30 zones you are in. Points are awarded according to how may droids have
reached which zone. The more droids you have surviving and the nearer the end of
the road they are, the more points you will score.

Michiel, FidoNet: 2:283/502