|
Playing C-ROID on the T5 brings back a lot of memories for
me, which sadly, probably means that I'm 'above a certain age' such
that my first access to computer games was in the arcades rather than
the home. Asteroids was a staple arcade game in that era being
relatively simple in concept and graphic design yet frustrating enough
in the game-play that it could hold your attention and persuade you to
insert another 20p into the machine.
C-ROID is fundamentally and deliberately an Asteroids clone
for PalmOS, the basics of which are exactly the same as the arcade
version I used to play all that time ago - you have a ship which you
fly through an asteroid field with the simple aim of surviving the
flight. Your ship is armed and is fairly manoeuvrable and actually
seems to be rather generously endowed with shields. To survive and
progress through the levels of the game you must shoot up all the
asteroids you encounter (or crash into them if you really must though
watch that shield level - it drops fast).
The first comment I have to make about C-ROID is that this is
a low-resolution (160x160) game that may not appeal to everyone on the
pure graphical front. Having said that, though, this is purely a visual
observation and doesn't affect the accuracy or difficulty of the
game-play. I said at the start, this was a very early arcade offering
and so, with that lineage in mind, flashy graphics and high-resolution
bitmaps are not a specific requirement of the game! (Still, an update
to a hi-resolution graphics set would be nice to see at some point.)
Actually, my chief problem with this game is nothing to do
with its programming or its graphics, but the fact that playing it has
reminded me just how bad I used to be at playing Asteroids. All of the
frustration I used to experience in those arcades came flooding back
the moment I first opened C-ROID. Part of that frustration in this
instance was due to the speed of play (on a T5, the default is way too
fast for me!) but the rest is due to my ineptitude. Even when I
configured the game for a slower speed, my ability still told in the
game scores.
The asteroids themselves come in many shapes and sizes. Large
ones appear first but as you shoot them up they get smaller and smaller
until they are destroyed. Their paths are fairly random and as in real
life, the disruption caused by blowing them apart modifies their
trajectories as well as their size. Some asteroids are simple rock,
some are magnetic and some are even worse. While normal rocks will
destroy you if you hit them hard enough, or hit enough of them,
magnetic cored rocks will actively attract your ship so making the risk
of destruction that much greater. You can use your thrusters to try and
counter their attraction but given the relative speed of the action,
this isn't as easy as it sounds. Retro-thrusters are available as an
upgrade, though, and fitting these will solve a number of
manoeuvrability issues...affording them is the problem.
As well as oodles of asteroids, there are aliens in this
universe. To be honest, they actually seem easier to deal with then the
rocks even though they can return your fire in combat. As long as you
can avoid being shot too often and can get the odd shot off yourself
then the alien problem (in the early levels at least) should be
containable.
Both asteroids and aliens may carry mineral pockets that you
can collect and turn into cash. Simply flying through them is enough to
achieve this. Then, given that you've accumulated enough funds, at the
end of a round you can upgrade your ship and/or weaponry to give you a
better chance in the next round. (This is where the retro rockets come
in.) Unfortunately, given my innate ability with this game, I really
haven't been able to get far enough to test most of these upgrades so
my description is limited of necessity!
As I've said, you can set the speed of the game to make it
playable on your device. You can also set the sound level (on/off) and
the level of graphical detail (background on/off toggle). All of this
helps speed the game up (or slow it down) if required, I guess, so the
playability can be fine tuned within certain limits. This is fine, up
to a point. The problem I have, however, is the fact that none of these
option settings are remembered from one game to the next. The moment
you leave the game, your settings are gone. This is rather off-putting
(a bit of a pain) particularly if you need to keep the sound off
wherever you are playing. As with many applications, this doesn't seem
to use the system level sound settings in the preferences panel so can
cause a disturbance at the most inappropriate times.
There's not really too much more to say about C-ROID other
than to suggest you give it a go if you have the slightest interest in
this type of game. As a piece of freeware it's good enough (and fast
enough!) to play and keep for a while to pass those odd five minutes of
boredom when waiting for the bus. The graphics aren't bad, even in
lo-resolution on a hi-resolution device and the challenge is certainly
up to scratch.
|
