Subject: REVIEW: Armour-Geddon
From: Steve Koren <[email-masked]>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

Review of Armour-Geddon by Psygnosis.  Very good 3d filled
polygon game with a few flaws which keep it from being a great
game.  If you like simulations this is worth it.

I recently bought Armour-Geddon.  This is published by Psygnosis:

  Psygnosis
  29 Saint Mary's Court
  Brookline
  MA 02146
  USA

Armour-Geddon is a series of linked vehicle simulators.  There are
simulators for Heavy Tanks, Light Tanks, Hovercraft, Helicopters,
Fighters, and Bombers.  You move around in a 3d filled polygon world which
is fairly large.

The basic goal is to collect 5 pieces of a neutron bomb which you then use
to destroy a hardened enemy bunker.  This is not as straightforward as it
might at first seem.  This enemy is trying to create a laser, and they
will certainly do this before you can obtain all the bomb pieces.  To slow
them down, you need to destroy parts of their power grid.

You have a supply of scientists, who design things, and engineers, who
build things.  There is perhaps 20 or so different useful gadgets you can
build (vehicles, various types of weapons, fuel tanks, etc).  You can
allocate scientists and engineers to whichever items you feel are
important.  You have enough scientists but there are never enough
engineers to build all the things you want.

Once you build some basic supplies, you can go out and destroy some of the
enemy's hardware.  There are six vehicles which you can control at once,
in theory.  In practice, you can't control nearly that many (unless
perhaps you play in two player mode).  The practical limit is around two,
or one when you are just learning.  You can switch from one vehicle to
another with a single keystroke.  The old vehicle goes on auto-pilot, and
either heads towards a set waypoint, or circles.

You pick the vehicle you want to control, and equip it with various
gadgets.  All the vehicle types have a nearly identical cockpit layout
which makes it easy to get used to them.  Some of the controls are also
the same, but they behave quite differently (as you'd expect).  My
favorite weapons are missiles (guided) and rockets (unguided).  You first
look at the map, set a waypoint to your target location, and pilot your
chosen vehicle to that point.  Then you shoot things.  The world is a
"target rich environment" :-)

You can just blow up things at random, but to get very far you have to
develop a strategy.  You need to pick up bomb pieces with the heavy tank,
but most of them are beyond the range of this tank.  Therefore, you need
to use a teleport pod, which allows you to move around quickly.  To get a
teleport pod near the bomb piece.  You must drop it off with the bomber,
but the bomber is a big cumbersome thing which is likely to be shot down
quickly.  So the first task is to fly a few "defense suppression" missions
with the fighter or copter, trying to cool things off enough to get the
bomber in.  The fighter gets there faster and is less prone to attacks by
enemy fighters and helicopters.  The helicopter is slower and more
vulnerable, but it is better at picking off ground targets with rockets
since you can sit still.  Its often hard to hit ground targets with
unguided weapons when flying over them at 300 knots in the fighter.  The
tanks can fire rockets, lasers, or gun rounds.  Fired rounds obey the laws
of physics (they travel in a trajectory depending on the gun elevation).
This makes it hard to hit things far away, but opens up the possibility of
firing over hills and obstructions.  (It should be possible in 2 player
mode to fire over a mountain with the tank, and have your friend in a
helicopter be a spotter for the rounds to tell you where to aim next).

Each of the simulators is "moderately realistic".  The flight sim, for
example, is not on the level of a dedicated simulator such as Falcon, but
it is reasonably realistic.  Altitude, weight, etc all have effects on
flight dynamics.  In fact, sometimes in the helicopter you can sustain
engine damage which doesn't leave enough power to maintain altitude.  When
this happens, sometimes you can recover by releasing all weapons to become
lighter.

Vehicles have "shields" which have an adjustable recharge rate.  High
recharge rates will drain fuel supply very quickly.

The game itself is has on-disk copy protection.  This is obnoxious.  I'd
much rather see manual keyword lookup protection.  On my system I need to
run a program which enables the faster 32 bit memory on my 68030 card.  I
can't do this with the current game, since it requires me to reboot.  Thus
it runs in 16 bit memory several times slower than it has to on my system.
(However, this is still fast enough to be quite enjoyable).  The game will
run on fast processors and with fat agnuses.  I do not know about 2.0 or
3000s.  Sound effects are good both when you are inside the vehicle and
when you are in your home base.

[Several articles in comp.sys.amiga.games have stated that the game runs
under 2.0 on an A3000. -JLT3]

The game is also somewhat difficult.  Early in the learning curve, it is
hard to pilot a vehicle and have it remain alive for more than a minute or
two.  You get better at this over time.  Landing aircraft is never easy.
I can land the fighter around 50 to 75% of the time.  Landing the
helicopter is easy, but getting it to land _where you want_ is not so
easy.  Landing the hovercraft is not an issue since its always near the
ground, but driving it is hard.  If you move north at 100 knots, and turn
the vehicle pointing west, you still move north.  (One would expect a real
hovercraft to do this too).

There are slightly too many bad guys to really cope with in single player
mode.  I've never tried dual player mode, but I suspect it would be
easier.  (Both players work together on one team).  With two people, you
can have one person fly the bomber and the other a fighter escort, or
similarly for the tank and a helicopter.  Good teamwork could be important
as it is possible to shoot your teammate if you are not careful.  You can
only play this with a null modem cable (you can't use a modem).

Games can last a long time.  I have played it far enough to get the first
bomb piece, and that takes 1 to 2 hours of real time.  You can save games
in progress.

In my opinion, enemies are encountered with unusual frequency, which
causes the average vehicle lifetime to be quite short.  It is not unusual
for many of your vehicles to never make it back to base.  I would prefer
to see a model more similar to the old "Arctic fox" game where battles are
serious but spaced wider apart and sometimes best avoided altogether.
This makes strategy more useful and avoids the usual "blast-fest" genre.
(Arctic Fox, although it had very slow animation, was unusually well done
from this standpoint.  It dates to 85, but is worth it to obtain if you
can).  The enemy encounter frequence in a game such as Falcon is much more
enjoyable.

The documentation is sparse.  Many details are omitted and you have to
just try things to find them out.  For example, you need various resources
(types of metals, etc) to build equipment.  You start out with some, but
you will need to acquire more along the way.  The manual just hints at how
to do this, and doesn't really mention the details.  I don't quite
understand this aspect even now.

I hope that Psygnosis brings out an upgrade with the following features:

  * Variable play levels.  At easier levels there would be fewer enemies.
    This seems like it would be quite easy to do.

  * A map editor.  The existing world is pretty big, but the ability to
    make your own worlds would be a _lot_ of fun and extend the lifetime
    of the game.  One could also create easier or harder worlds.
    Different objectives than the bomb scenario would also be fun.  The
    map editor could even be a separate product for Psygnosis.  I'd buy
    one.

  * A training mode where you can pilot vehicles without interference from
    the enemy.  There is a training mode now, but you can still get shot
    with annoying frequency, which makes it hard to learn to operate the
    vehicles.

  * Ships with a larger fuel supply.  They run out quite quickly.  Using
    low shield recharge rates can help quite a bit here, but most of the
    ground vehicles still run out rapidly.

  * The ability to switch between vehicles is quite nice, but only has a
    limited usefulness.  The problem is that as soon as you move to
    another vehicle, the first, no longer taking evasive action or
    returning fire, succumbs to hostile fire within about 30 seconds.
    (Sometimes less than that).  Many times I have left a helicopter
    hovering, switched to another vehicle, and found that an enemy
    helicopter promptly started to pump several laser bursts per second
    into my helicopter.  It naturally doesn't last long under that sort of
    treatment.  I think that providing areas which have friendly
    anti-aircraft systems would provide safe places to park your vehicles
    when you're not running them.  At the very least, there should be some
    sort of on-screen icon which indicates which of your deployed vehicles
    is currently under attack.

This game is available for approximately $35 to $40 retail, or $26 mail
order.  It is well worth it.  The documentation implies there are versions
available in both English and a few of the more common European languages.

On a scale of 1 (worst) to 10 (best), I'd give this game a solid 8.  It'd
be higher with the addition of the few changes I've mentioned above.

  - Steve Koren
    [email-masked]