Guardian (CD32) (Second Review)


Title           Guardian (CD32) (Second Review)
Game Type       3D Action
Players         1
Company		Acid
Compatibility   CD32
Submission      Jason Compton

	This Amiga Report review appears here by courtesy of Jason Compton

Review
Give us a good CD32 game, so the call goes.

Give us something with nice graphics, fast RAM compatibility, NTSC/PAL
compatibility...oh, and fittingly good CD tracks.

Give us Guardian. It's really that good.

For those who haven't played the demo yet, Guardian is a 3D remote-camera
perspective game which finds its roots in the old game of Defender. The
upshot: Blow up all of the bad guys before they blow up your buildings.

You fly your speedy glider of death around what seems to be a small,
recurring plot of land (but with a suspension of disbelief could be an
entire planet), trying to find these baddies so you can hit them with your
rapid fire cannon.

What's to stop you?  Time...after all, you can't be everywhere at once, and
the enemy is rather widespead. (airlifted in from what appear to be huge
hot air balloons) Another deterrent is the fact that certain varieties of
enemy craft shoot back at you...chase you around...and try their hardest to
slam dead into you. You're provided with a shield, but it's often not
enough when you start hitting aliens or, worse, buildings. (Yep, you can
uproot a pine tree with your craft, and it does a number on you.)

What makes Guardian so nice?  Well, the flying-around-shooting-people is
well done and makes decent use of the CD32's pad. Control seems logical.
The graphics aren't stellar, but are crisp enough in their own right, and
the 3D generation is considerably enhanced by fast RAM. The
freely-adjustable camera angle is another bonus...if you're feeling
masochistic, you can place the camera in FRONT of your craft, relying on
your radar (and incredible luck) to keep you alive. Or, do a top-down,
wide-angle view of the land as you fly through it getting pummeled.

Life isn't perfect, though...on the faraway views of the camera, objects
just don't appear until they're ready, leaving "blank" areas where you
can't see anything coming. Also, if you place the camera below the plane
your craft flies at, ground-level objects appear to float in midair...

Ah, but that's ok. Guardian is good, solid, explosive fun that no CD32
owner with $45 to blow should be without. It's a great compliment to your
machine.


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