Aftershock

Copyright : Interceptor Micros | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

Gazing out of the window across the shattered City, the distorted shapes of the surrounding office blocks seem as twisted as fingers, pointing accusingly skyward, through the shifting viels of dust and smoke. Numerous fires blazing out of control; the siren of emergency service vehicles wailing like tormented soles, complete a picture more horrific than any vision of Dante.

The deductive people amongst you will realise that this is the scene after an horrific earthquake with dozens of people dead, dying or injured around you. Escape the building and find out what caused this nightmare vision in "After Shock".

Graphics

After Shock is yet another long winded text based adventure for your Amstrad CPC, those that ever owned a BBC Micro will no doubt be sick of the sight of these games by now as they were highly popular in the early 1980s.

Graphics wise After Shock isn?t half bad considering that most of the other text based adventures we have reviewed so far at CPC Zone don?t have any graphics in them at all. The artist Terry Greer has put a fair amount of work into the occasional image that pops up on your screen and they certainly look a lot better than any of the BBC adventures we played as they help build the atmosphere of the game as you progress. Don?t expect any animation or cute sprites to jump out at you though because there isn?t any.

Sound

As with 90% of text adventures on the CPC the sound is a let down with practically nothing to offer the player at all, okay there?s not a lot of actual sound you could use to make a text adventure stand out but the occasional piece of music wouldn?t go a miss.

Gameplay

And now the gameplay, well if you had the stomach and patience to complete the other text adventures on the CPC (those without graphics etc) this one may well be worth checking out, the story line is fairly good and does contain a few twists along the way (we won?t tell you these though) and with the added bonus of illustrations you can?t loose.

If you don?t like text adventures at all however then it?s best to keep well away from this and any others we review.