Sabre Wulf *is* bloody hard. That's the attraction for me - console games these days just haven't got any difficulty to them.
D.
Thats not strictly true, games in general have got much easier but if you are looking for difficult games they are out there. Ikaruga for instance. I find Mr. Driller gets insanely difficult, but thats probably because I'm crap at block puzzle games.
And a fair proportion of console games have a selectable difficulty level, whack it on high... you'll soon regret it. Moments of tearful frustration are still possible on the consoles.
Never really thought about it in a bad way, as it's an Ultimate game, but it's not the best game ever written, just pretty average really.
I have to disagree with you there. No way was Sabre Wulf an average game. For the time, graphically it was excellent. An improvement , visually better than Atic Atac, but not necessarily a better game. The gameplay was still as entertaining, but I must say that I found it hard, so I never played it much.
Ahhh the old classic .. many a day spent bunking off school just so i could play it .. i do agree with others that Atic Atac has the edge with sheer playability but it's only now that i can look back and realise just how damn good them graphics were
unlike Underwurlde and Cyberun which are just irritating.
Necros.
:) Can we have a thread slagging off Underwurlde? That game irritated me - back when I was young and impressionable I thought I ought to like it 'cos everyone said it was good, it got good reviews - then eventually I thought - hang on, this isn't fun, why am I wasting my time on it?
Cyberun was just as bad - but by then I'd started makign my own mind up on games, so as soon as I'd played it and realised it wasn't fun, I stopped playing.
I thought Underwurlde was good as it was pretty different from Atic Atac/Sabre Wulf. Frustrating as anything and never came close to completing it (like a fair few Ultimate games)
Cyberrun i 'wanted' to really like but it was way too hard.
I'd say that the problem with Underwurlde is that it's even worse in the random death stakes than Sabre Wulf; sometimes you just can't avoid being knocked off the bubbles or ropes and fall to your death without even having much of a chance to do anything. The falling stalactites are just downright unfair.
Still, it was a cutting edge game in its day and spawned a few clones like Soul Of A Robot, Nodes Of Yesod and Starquake. By contrast, Ultimate had well and truly lost their sheen by the time Cyberun came out; there were dozens of similar games around that both looked and played better.
I always thought Cyberun was a shame, because it wasn't bad due to any fundamental flaws in the game, it just needed a few tweaks - make the ship more manouvreable (before you collect the engines) and make the baddies a little easier to avoid or shoot down etc. and it could have been great fun to play.
Underwurlde I just found unbearable to play - never felt like it was possible to be really in control of what happened - you were just at the mercy of the random way the baddies homed in on you or the stalagtites fell or the bubbles popped etc.
When you felt like you were getting somewhere then you fell off a bubble or someone knocked you off and you plumetted miles and miles, sooo frustrating !!! Still, cool box as always with those Ultimate games !
Comments
They did, and I thought it was fairly common knowledge:
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=Crash/Issue09/Pages/Crash0900087.jpg
Thats not strictly true, games in general have got much easier but if you are looking for difficult games they are out there. Ikaruga for instance. I find Mr. Driller gets insanely difficult, but thats probably because I'm crap at block puzzle games.
And a fair proportion of console games have a selectable difficulty level, whack it on high... you'll soon regret it. Moments of tearful frustration are still possible on the consoles.
I have to disagree with you there. No way was Sabre Wulf an average game. For the time, graphically it was excellent. An improvement , visually better than Atic Atac, but not necessarily a better game. The gameplay was still as entertaining, but I must say that I found it hard, so I never played it much.
:) Can we have a thread slagging off Underwurlde? That game irritated me - back when I was young and impressionable I thought I ought to like it 'cos everyone said it was good, it got good reviews - then eventually I thought - hang on, this isn't fun, why am I wasting my time on it?
Cyberun was just as bad - but by then I'd started makign my own mind up on games, so as soon as I'd played it and realised it wasn't fun, I stopped playing.
I played it for hours on end back then, although i can appreciate how difficult and frustrating it was.
I must have had the patience of a saint to enjoy games like that and technician ted etc.
Cyberun was ok'ish, but it never should have got a crash smash(imo).
Cyberrun i 'wanted' to really like but it was way too hard.
Necros.
Still, it was a cutting edge game in its day and spawned a few clones like Soul Of A Robot, Nodes Of Yesod and Starquake. By contrast, Ultimate had well and truly lost their sheen by the time Cyberun came out; there were dozens of similar games around that both looked and played better.
Underwurlde I just found unbearable to play - never felt like it was possible to be really in control of what happened - you were just at the mercy of the random way the baddies homed in on you or the stalagtites fell or the bubbles popped etc.