Sega's shades of Robocop

Assault City takes its inspiration from the popular sci-fi truism that in the 21st century domestic robots will be as essential a piece of household furniture as a refrigerator or TV set.

Whether or not this is an accurate prediction for the future of Zanussi's 'appliance of science' remains to be seen but one thing is already clear. Malfunctioning droids who turn from docile slaves into homicidal bone crushers are likely to continue to dominate the computer games scene, even if this does involve flouting the first rule of robotics (as outlined by Asimov) - a droid can never harm a human being.

The Assault City droids, like so many before them, show scant regard for this seminal piece of robot brain engineering. Ho hum, here we go again, the droid's on the loose - killing anything that moves. And you thought the connection between technology and computer games might lead to a more intelligent understanding of the future. You were wrong - and have five seconds to live.

If you do plug Assault City into your Sega before you die, you'll find it all boils down to an updating of the old fairground duck-shoot type games, so popular on early console offerings.

Your cross hair is moved around the screen and positioned over a target before it disappears - or in the case of Assault City before it strafes your hero with laser fire. A shooting gallery training mode is compulsory at the beginning of the game to determine the level of difficulty. Tiles spin around to reveal the crazed droids and you have to blast them before the tiles spin back again.

In the game itself there are six levels of difficulty. Each one comes in two phases - battle mayhem and a more calculated shoot out with an end-of-level guardian. Four important barometers are positioned above the main action window keeping you posted on your life force level, heat reading, strength of power-up reading and high score reading.

At the end of each of the six levels of action is an end-of-level guardian that can only be destroyed by shooting in certain strategic places. This makes for marginally more interesting target practice but overall the game is a fairly lacklustre blast 'em up.

This type of game has been greatly improved by adding 3D animation to the targets in games like Operation Wolf and Operation Thunderbolt. Sega themselves have an excellent rendition of this new modern shooting gallery style video game in their own Rambo title - and this is greatly recommended to anyone seeking a game of this type. Unfortunately, in Assault City, sound effects, graphics, the storyline, and game play all fail to impress.

Eugene Lacey

£24.99dk OUT NOW

GRAPHICS

6

IQ FACTOR

3

AUDIO

4

FUN FACTOR

4

ACE RATING

480

Predicted Interest Curve

Very disappointing shoot 'em up. The cross hair super-imposed on the screen technique has now moved on a good deal since the Duck Shoot days but Assault City doesn't embrace any of these improvements. There just isn't enough challenge in there for even the less dexterous shoot 'em ups fans and it quickly becomes boring.

Rating

48

Reviewer

ACE magazine

Region

UK

Scans

ACE-Magazine-Issue34?gallerypage=56

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