Blade Warrior

Copyright : Codemasters | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

The Power Blade shudders as the death demon appears in front of you, with one massive magical spell the demon shatters the power blade, a magical sword capable of stopping evil dead in it?s tracks.
Now is your only chance to strike and slay the evil demon who challenges you. Sounds a little corny I know but that?s how Codemasters themselves explained it.

Graphics

It appears that Codemasters didn?t put a lot of effort into games that followed the Seymour and Dizzy series of adventures as the low colour scheme in Blade Warrior indicates. If you had the original game and looked on the back cover you would see some Spectrum screenshots, compare those with the graphics you see on your much better CPC and you won?t notice much of a difference at all. Animation is very sub-standard, collision detection is well and truly off balance and some of the graphics appear to have been rushed prior to the release. A good example of how rushed the game appears can be seen straight from the moment the game loads, note that the standard CM menu has been replaced by two white bars that cover the game screen, not nice to look at.
I for one expected a little more than a ZX Spectrum conversion from a major player like Codemasters.

Sound

Sound is another major let down, Codemasters are often quite good at releasing titles that have both music and sound effects but in the case of Blade Warrior it appears the ball was dropped slightly. We certainly didn?t hear much during play but then again the graphical and gameplay glitches didn?t keep us hanging around for very long.
The best thing about the soundtrack however is the sampled speach that grazes your tiny CPC speaker ever now and again (mainly when you die) which was something special back in the late 80?s and early 90?s

Gameplay

The biggest problem in terms of gameplay is the collision detection, sometimes you will jump on an elevating floor panel and fall straight off without even moving to the left or right. Other times you will simply brush past what looks like an unimportant object and be killed instantly. The fact that you don?t have any energy so to speak and a single strike can kill you dead it?s more than a little frustrating and can easily become a deleted item on your HD.
Codemasters didn?t quite deliver the goods on this game and despite the excellent comments on the back of the original packaging (an obvious ploy to make you purchase the game) it?s nothing special at all.