Cerberus

Copyright : Players | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

In what appears to be another attempt to take over the galaxy those pesky aliens have returned once more and are threatening old mother earth, it is up to you to take to the limits of space and destroy the oncoming threat before humanity knows what it is realy like to feel pain.

Graphics

Cerberus looks pretty nice indeed, from the moment the loading screen presents itself you know that at least it isn?t going to be another failed ZX Spectrum port with nothing more than 4 colours on screen at once and most of those being shades of gray. The in-game graphics are fairly well planned though the oncoming attack waves leave little to the imagination as most of the alien craft perform the same manouvre over again as the fly down the screen.

It would have been nice to see a little variation in the oncoming space craft too, don?t get us wrong the graphics do change as you progress but it is mostly just a cosmetic one (change of colour, size etc) rather than a full blown new enemy. Cerberus is a pretty fast paced shoot-em-up though and there are certainly no major bugs in the graphics to prevent any shoot-em-up fan from enjoying the game within.

Sound

The game starts with a very familiar piece of classical music (don?t ask me why) and then moves onto the simple in-game sound effects for games of this genre. If you add music to Galactic Plague then you have a rough idea of what to expect with this title. There are enough sounds to keep you interested but its always best to add a little more, some music would have gone down a treat too.

Gameplay

The game plays much the same as all the other shoot-em-ups in your collection, move left or right and occasionally thrust forward to avoid the oncoming fire and do your best to kill as many as possible. Sadly there is nothing particularly unique about this game unless you count the thrust option, but then again the ability to move up and down during shoot-em-ups has been around since the dawn of Centipede for the Atari 2600.

The game itself can be picked up and played by anyone without the need to consult any kind of manual and the difficulty ranges from fairly easy to pretty hard, nothing more and nothing less. Controls are a bit of a nightmare but if you can get the menu to work correctly these can be redefined, please note that some emulators (not naming them here) will not allow you to redefine the keys for this title.

Cerberus is not a game that should be avoided and is certainly worth playing but it probably isn?t going to keep you entertained for very long, especially die-hard shoot-em-up fans.