Night Shade

Copyright : Ultimate | Reviewed by : Ritchardo

Hindsight dictates that Nightshade marked the beginning of the end for Ultimate as a software publishing company. The shine had already departed from some of their C64 only titles and their work for the Spectrum and latterly Amstrad was coming under more and more critical scrutiny. With each new release came an increase in the number of disgruntled punters, complaining that the originality and spark had gone. Despite generally favourable reviews in the gaming press, Nightshade was not as a big a success as it?s predecessors and was viewed as a disappointment by the gaming public.

Is this a fair assessment though of Nightshade?s value as a game - does it stand up better now, away from the glare of overly passionate hope and hyperbole or was it indeed the first nail in the coffin of the Ultimate label?

Graphics

Still championing their use of their own patented Filmation techniques and with the return of Sabreman, Nightshade has some pretty obvious comparisons with Knight Lore and Alien8 on a superficial level. As soon as the game starts moving, however, a big and significant change to the look of the game is revealed. Gone are the single flick screens replaced with a scrolling map that radically alters the way the game is played.

Certainly the game looks good - nicely detailed background and characters populate the game world. The problems arise entirely through the new scrolling method. Due to the 3D nature of the game and the isometric execution, you will often find yourself entering buildings and behind corners as such that you would not be able to see : to combat this the programmers let you see through walls and replace them with a thin orange line. This is all very good in theory, however, this does leave the screen fairly empty at times save for some orange lines - hardly impressive.

The other drawback stems from the slowdowns that crop up. An unfortunate hallmark of the Ultimate games, the slowdowns are due to the amount detail packed into the graphics and the problems that arise when more than one moving object is on screen at one time - as you can imagine with a free roaming map, this problem is exacerbated and the game will fairly regularly change speed which can be very off-putting and irritating, especially when things begin to get hectic.

Having said that, Sabreman looks as good as he ever has and it has one or two nice touches that are particularly worthy of praise - look out for Sabreman?s reaction when you walk him face first into a wall. The game is undeniably attractive it?s just a little too clever for its own good.

Sound

The thorn in Ultimate?s side, the sound still disappoints on Nightshade and again fails to get anything beyond just passable marks. The sound effects are good but become grating and the tune at the beginning of the game is pleasant but way too short. Same old, same old.

Gameplay

As if in response to their detractors, Nightshade plays completely unlike Knight Lore and Alien8. As mentioned previously, the scrolling map layout changes the dynamics of the game and moves it away from adventuring and places it solely in the laps of arcade action.

The rudimentary puzzles have been completely jettisoned in favour of a plot which requires you to find the four objects that will kill the evil ones who rule the land (a skeleton, a monk, the grim reaper and a ghost). As well as these four there are countless other gremlins and nasties to avoid and these can be shot with ?antibodies? that lie in the many buildings and rooms in the playing area. Each antibody works on a different creature and will either kill it outright or split it down into its composite parts which have to be shot again to kill it off.

The shoot-em-up action is fun and challenging in the short term but there are very little in the way of hidden depths to the game: give it an hour of solid gameplay and you?ll have seen pretty much everything there is to see.

It is a difficult task and despite my initial dislike, I found myself returning for another go and its certainly got all the addictive qualities that a good game needs.

As fun as the game is though, it doesn?t have the same spark of originality about it that Knight Lore did and reverting back to a purely arcade game does feel like a half step back.

Did this game provide the beginning of the end for Ultimate? Probably. That?s not to say that it was particularly fair that it did.