Rick Dangerous

Copyright : Firebird | Reviewed by : Ritchardo

The adventure starts here...

Will Rick Dangerous, intrepid Super Hero and part-time stamp collector, survive his first mission in the Aztec temple of the tribe? Should he do so, Rick will face new hazards in the Egyptian tomb and the enemy fortress.

Programmed by Core, the people that would later bring us Lara Croft, Rick Dangerous was the company?s first foray into Tomb Raiding.

Graphics

Packed full of colour, Rick Dangerous blends a neat fusion of cuteness and hard-edged 2D platforming. With a number of devious traps and baddies, the three scenarios each have their own theme and are all tip top graphical achievements.

There are plenty of details that are taken for granted at first and its not until you?ve played the game a few times, gone away and then came back that you pick up on some of the neater touches such as the spotted boxer shorts of the Goolu warriors. Childish? Sure, but it?s still good fun.

Animation in the game is fluid and the only real drawback to the look of the game is the unfortunate slowdowns in gameplay that are brought about by just too much going on in the screen at the one time.

Sound

With no music at all, the game instead uses continual sound effects to indicate Rick?s footsteps through the caves, tombs and castles as well as a range of tones and noises to indicate traps being set off, enemy deaths, explosions and the like. Great variety of sounds.

Gameplay

The original Tomb Raider, Rick Dangerous is the game that they should have made for the Indiana Jones licence. The perfect balance of platform action and puzzle solving, the game is as much a test of memory as it is a test of reflexes. For those of you who?ve played it before, you?ll be amazed at how quickly the trap locations come flooding back!

Rick?s quest is, in a nutshell, to collect all the treasure and escape while avoiding the many traps and enemies that get in his way. To aid him he can shoot baddies and switches with his trusty pistol or blow them up with sticks of dynamite.

The difficulty curve is pitch perfect too and you wont find much problem getting past the first level after some trial and error, the second will test you greatly and the third will keep you going for a long, long time!

The one downside to the gameplay comes from some of the precision that is required to foil some of the later traps. While this is all well and good and perfectly in keeping with what you would expect from a good game, losing all your lives means returning to the very start and not only is this frustrating but ultimately demoralising.

An absolute revelation on release, Rick Dangerous has barely aged a day and still looks as fresh and original as it did in 1989.