Offshore Warrior logo

Titus
Price: £24.95

Following in the footsteps of their previous attempts at a 16-bit racing game, the reasonable Crazy Cars and the completely awful Fire and Forget comes Offshore Warrior, from French software house Titus.

Although neither of their previous release made any real impact on the charts, Titus have yet again tried to prove that they can produce a decent race game. Sadly Offshore Warrior isn't it.

At least it scores a few points for offering a slightly different approach. No cars, bikes or trucks here. Instead the whole thing takes place in the water. The year is 2050 (snooze) and the hippest, trendiest and most entertaining sport of the time is driving power boats loaded with heat-
seeking missiles around large aquatic arenas. What we have here is exactly the same game as Fire and Forget, though if anything it's more limited (if you can imagine that).

The object of the game is simple: finish the race in first or second position so you can qualify for the next, using fair means (racing as fast as you can to beat everyone else) or foul (blast everything in sight). Actually the latter method isn't quite as exciting as it may sound, especially when you consider that you only get two(!) missiles to start off with, so if you want to plough along raking everything you find Road Blasters-style forget it.

Like last month's zoom-bang effort Space Racer it's sometimes difficult to see exactly which way you're meant to be going, as the course is only marked out by a series of bollards on either side of you that can become unclear and indistinct when racing at high speed.

Aside from this, Offshore Warrior is rather unfortunate in quite a lot of other respects as well. Shooting an opponent boat (or getting killed yourself) results in the most pathetic attempt at an explosion I've seen in an Amiga game. Also, the impression of speed is not very well put across. The badly-defined water (which is just a series of different shades of blue in a row) seems to be scrolling the wrong way so it actually looks like you're going backwards!

Also all of the objects in the water such as the rocks and the bollards move at a different speed to the water, giving the impression that they aren't actually in the water at all. These faults all manage to wreck a game that otherwise could have been VERY good indeed. If any machine can produce a red-hot race game, it's the Amiga, and Titus, being the race merchants that they are should have delivered the goods by now.



Offshore Warrior logo

Titus, £24.99 disk

The year is 2050. Laws have been revamped, reintroduced and then abandoned. Safety laws governing race sports have changed drastically, resulting in fiercer, more deadly competitions taking place for the crowds' enjoyment.

Surviving Offshore speed-racers become cult heroes and role models for adventurous young people across the world. As a result, more people take up the sport, hoping to compete in the ultimate across-the-world Offshore Warrior trials.

Events are similar to normal power boat trials, except there is the added danger of boats armed with rocket launchers - a subtle attempt to increase their chances by thinning out the field.

There are two basic rules for survival:
1. Don't finish last to continue.
2. Try to stay alive.

Zzap's Rockford: Glub!

kati Hamza I didn't think much of Road Blasters, I didn't think much of Fire And Forget and I've got an even lower opinion of Offshore Warrior, which is really just Fire And Forget with a bit of water thrown in. Maybe some people (like one in a hundred thousand, maybe) get a kick out of appalling 3D graphics, boring gameplay and no challenge whatsoever - well, good luck to them because I certainly don't. If I'd spent 25 quid on this, I'd be dead disappointed - what a waste!
Maff Evans What a con! Shuffling around a few routines from a previous game and changing the graphics is not exactly fair to the game playing public, is it? It seems that this is all that Titus have done - messing about with Fire And Forget to produced Offshore Warrior. The 3D effect is very similar, with the sprites having a cardboard cut-out quality to them, and the gameplay is pretty much the same as well. Well that's not quite fair - Fire And Forget, which wasn't exactly brilliant, had a lot more to it! Offshore is rather easy to complete too, making the long term appeal quite limited. Another poor 3D game from Titus. When are we going to see something new?