By Reservoir Gods
http://www.reservoir-gods.com
Nope. I have absolutely no idea how to open up this review. No jokes, no
comments, nothing on my mind. So, let's get to it.
Grimey. 1MB STEs and upwards. Demo. Demonstration. Some piece of code
tied together with a piece of music and bits of graphics to show what a computer
is capable of.
The demo (by Damo!) begins pretty violently! The screen gets cleared and
then wham! some monochrome text-mode plasma (of course that should read text-
mode emulation, replicating the style of C64 demos mainly) and the words Lets go
a few minutes after that.
Before I proceed any fruther, I should make a few comments that apply to
the whole demo. For starters the music (which is what hits you first): It is
utterly and totally weird! The STE's DMA gets used just for playing some drum
loops (and sometimes shouting a Smurf-like Grimey!), and, I quote from the
readme, "teamed with a bugged out ym replay rout". Now, some people will find
this music a brave artistic attempt to bring out the emotions and anxieties of
the modern man, who tries to gasp for a breath of air in this asphyxiating and
gloomy world, but can't do anything more than that because of the irrevocably
fixed obligations that today's society inherits him (!). On the other hand,
others will find it pure shit, or at its best, a bugged music rout! Personally,
I find it weird!
Another thing worth mentioning is that at unsuspected (but not random)
points the current effect freezes. This happens (mostly) precisely at the snare
drum, but not in every beat, so it's a bit unpredictable (well, if you go and
watch it 15 times in a row it won't, but will you do that? ;). This makes up for
a screwy effect for your eyes, as they follow motion and suddendly it stops
(think about it a bit: as a kid, didn't you try to do something like spinning
around constantly for 10-15 seconds, and then stopping immediately? Didn't your
perception go bonkers at that time?). Anyway, this effect adds more to the
weirdness.
Anyway, to proceed with the description of the demo, the plasma effects
come and go, which unfortunately I can't describe here (it would need a bigger
text than the demo itself :), but they are pretty nevertheless. While this is
happening, some text informs us about what life sometimes isn't. Then it
concludes that some times it's Grimey with a big logo.
And then we get another effect: a texture mapped trapezoid (2 planes,
read 4 colors) whos texture is something that reminds of barb wire (not the
movie! -what? :) which displays a bit of the monochroms character plasma at some
points (see 2 paragraphs above).
Then the screen clears up and the credits are displayed. And, frankly,
it's the bit I personally didn't like. I mean, boing, Grafix: SH3 and then the
screen is cleared with 4 80x200 rectangles. Come on, a little imagination here
and it could have been a killer effect with dead cool gfx. The only thing that
saves this bit is that after the 1st credits screen, the barbed wire texture
gets another appearance, but it's spinning around this time.
And finally, the last effect is beamed to our monitors: a first person
3-D texture mapped raycasted maze (notice how I subtletly avoided the word
W***enstein here! It's not like it was the first game with a 3-D maze! Take
Alternate Reality on 8-bit machines for example!). It is a bit low-rez, about
half the screen in height, and then every second line is being displayed. But
never mind, it's pleasant anyway. Actually the raycasting is done by some sort
of dithering, which brings back the first plasma effects shown. Which is how the
demo ends, actually. Some more plasma, and the big Grimey logo appearing again.
So, that concludes the effects we experienced in this demo. Now comes
the difficult part: Verdict.
For starters, and this goes for all releases as far as I'm concerned,
top marks for the release! Whatever (well, almost!) is released gets top marks
by me, simply because no matter what people might think of it
(good/nice/bad/awful/sucks/indifferent etc.) some person(s) got down, took a
computer, and did something creative with it. Think of your average computer
user: he(she) usually knows very little stuff about computers and all he(she)
can do is boot Window$, open up Word and write a report or something like that.
Or play a game or two. Not a single one of them takes the computer for something
else than just a machine to ease his/her work. There are actually quite a small
percentage of people that do something creative, and an even smaller percentage
does this on Atari machines these days. And this (for me) is commendable. With
every new thing I download for my Atari, I always have the same enthusiasm and
impatience as I had when (back in 87-88) I unpacked my Atari 800XL.
Now, to get more specific for the demo at hand. We have a few effects,
running fast, with a overall nice presentation, smart gfx and a dead weird
music! It's a very nice demo indeed. My only criticism is that it may be a bit
too small in duration. Perhaps it would be better if we could have a bit more
time to study the plasma effects? Or, any effect, for that matter? Mabye a few
more effects?
No matter, a very pretty demo, with its own, unique style! Thanks, RG!
GGN/KÜA software procutions/Alive Team
ggn@atari.org
P.S. I don't rate demos or games. If you want ratings, read a more
"professional" review! (no pun intended, here)
Since Paranoid also wrote a review, you can find it here !
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