Defend or Die

Copyright : Alligata Software | Reviewed by : scooby1970

This was Alligata's remake of the classic Williams Arcade classic, Defender. One of the greatest, and hardest shoot-em-ups of all time! You fly a lone space-craft shooting down the alien invaders who attempt to steal away your people from the planet surface. So, how does this version compare to the other versions that were released on the good old CPC?

Graphics

This game in this game, right from the very start are very satisfactory for the game that it is. The menu screen displays the various enemy's and their points value. Each of the enemy's sprites are well designed, and the overall feel of the graphics is not bad considering this was a fairly early release.

Your main spacecraft is also well designed, and the backgrounds are typical Defender line-drawn backdrops. The scrolling in the game is fast and smooth, and the alien invaders move well. There is a large map on the top of the screen for you to keep an eye on where all the action is taking place, and you'll need to use this, because the game developers forgot to put a sound in when one of your earth-beings are captured by the aliens!

Sound

There is no title music in this game what-so-ever, and the game relies on sound effects from you firing your space-ships laser. As mentioned earlier however, there is one fatal omission from the sound which is really not acceptable in a Defender clone... When one of your men is kidnapped by an alien invader, no sound is played!!!! On such a big playing area, you really need a sound to be played so that you can look around and save them! This one very small omission leads to some drastic overall gameplay faults.

Gameplay & Final Comments

This game looks and feels like Defender. The game, on all versions ever released, has always been hard to play, however this game falls short due to that lack of noise for aliens kidnapping your people! It turns a what-looks-like great conversion into a nightmare to play if you're after a high-score and getting further into the game.

Defend Or Die should have been a lot more, it could have been a great clone, yet we had to wait for Micropower's Gauntlet before the CPC had a really great Defender clone. This is a game you could play for a while, but you will get infuriated over the lack of knowledge that things are happening and you just do not know about it!!!! Pick up Gauntlet instead, it's got everything that this game has, plus a whole lot more!