KNIGHT FORCE

 KNIGHT FORCE is a strategy/arcade game from Titus Corporation. It offers
excellent graphics, fine animation, crummy gameplay, graphic glitches, a no-save
save option, joystick or keyboard control, and copy protection. 

 A while back, Titus distributed a couple of games that showed promise. One of
these was GALACTIC CONQUEROR, an ego-boosting arcade game that you could lose
only by turning off your machine; the other was TITAN, one of the more
interesting, if physically exhausting, variations of BREAKOUT. Other Titus
games, such as F-40 PURSUIT SIMULATOR and FIRE AND FORGET, looked okay, but
either played poorly or suffered from coding glitches and screen foul-ups. A
glossy ad for KNIGHT FORCE intrigued me so much that I actually couldn't wait to
review the game. Alas! It turns out that I was duped by Madison Avenue (not the
first time and surely not the last): KNIGHT FORCE appears to be worth several
thousand dollars, but plays as if it's worth only ten cents.

 The KNIGHT FORCE plot concerns Belloth, the Kingdom at the crossroads of time
and space; Red-Sabbath, an evil sorceror who has kidnapped Princess Tanya; and
the Knight of Thunder, the warrior-guardian who holds the key to the time-space
gates. The goal of the game is to enter the five time zones, capture the
power-enhancing magic amulets, destroy the clones of Red-Sabbath, destroy the
real Red-Sabbath, and rescue Princess Tanya. The Princess suffers from
claustrophobia which, thanks to her incarceration in the clammy and compact
dungeons, could plunge her into the abyss of madness at any moment. As
terrifying as this sounds, it's not something you need worry about.

 The five time zones take you to: a prehistoric era; Versailles; today in New
York; somewhere and sometime in the future; and a timeless mystical land. Each
zone includes indigenous creatures: Cro-Magnons, hangmen, punk gang leaders,
robots, and dwarves with really large and nasty choppers.

 The main ST graphics screen consists of a "dashboard," and five rock structures
(called dolmens) that represent the time zones. The dashboard displays a timer
and pendulum, a score indicator, knight and enemy power bars, a time zone
indicator, and any magic amulets you've collected. Total mission time is 20
minutes. The game ends when your power bar runs down, which happens far more
frequently than the expiration of the timer.

 Once you've selected a dolmen, you'll be sent to the appropriate zone. The
graphic displays for each are wonderfully portrayed: colorful and brightly-lit,
or grim and dank, but always atmospheric. The screen scrolls left and right,
depending on which way you're headed; at least one zone has a lower level. The
many creatures attack immediately: There are lethal birds, bouncing springs, the
Red-Sabbath clones, street urchins, skeletons, air bubbles, and even disembodied
hands that rise up from beneath the ground to assault you.

 You must make your way through each landscape, do battle with the creatures
until you find an amulet, and reach the dungeon in Red-Sabbath's Castle of Doom,
where Princess Tanya is chained to the wall. At this point, Tanya will be
transported by sorcery to another zone, while you hang around and fight a
Red-Sabbath clone.

 You guide your onscreen knight with the joystick: The stick moves him left and
right -- moving him in a crouch effects a neat imitation of Chuck Berry's
"duckwalk" -- and jumps him in three directions. With the button pressed, you'll
have eight different sword attacks. The keyboard is an alternative, with the
numeric keypad replacing stick actions and the spacebar replacing the joystick
button.

 The KNIGHT FORCE package comes with two copy-protected disks, and an
instruction manual that advances the Titus tradition of illiteracy: The
individual words can be understood, but when you try to put them into
comprehensible sentences -- which you must do because Titus did not -- the final
result makes only marginal sense. The importance of the amulets is explained
most unclearly, and there's some gibberish about magic birds.

 The problems with KNIGHT FORCE begin soon after booting. When you select a time
zone, the dashboard sometimes disappears, which is not good because the current
state of your power bar becomes a mystery. Entering certain areas destroys the
bottom half of the screen, after which both game and machine freeze. Function
key F6 brings up the save-game option; although saving a position seemed
successful, reloading did not work once. Occasionally, one hit from a bird ended
the game, while in the Castle of Doom, I regularly managed to withstand a
zillion fireballs from Red-Sabbath.

 Swordplay is pathetic and not fun. The sword hits creatures when it shouldn't,
and misses them when they should have been hit. Other goofy things happen:
Crouch (in order to fight a low-flying bird or one of those toothy dwarves) but
don't swing your sword, and you'll get hit; crouch for the same reason but swing
the sword, and the bird flies past unharmed (or the dwarf chews out your heart).
None of this has anything to do with the timing of the sword swing: While even
the worst stick-twiddler gets lucky every now and then, in this game, luck is
not an option.

 KNIGHT FORCE looks terrific: When the program is functioning correctly, there's
lots of great artwork and slick animation to see; sad to report, correct
functioning is a finite condition. Either the game was not playtested before it
was released -- which is not cool, or it was playtested by telephone and
released anyway -- which is deplorable. Avoid KNIGHT FORCE unless you have lots
of money to waste.

 KNIGHT FORCE is published and distributed by Titus.

*****DOWLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253