 |
 |
|
|
The marriage of heaven and hell?
Ahh...
That flashy red jacket, that jerky, forward-leaned walking posture, that lethal cocktail of fast-paced racing and indoors-shooting action... The finest of 1988.
Road Raider.
No, wait. My mistake.
It is no coincidence that Technocop bears striking similarity to the aforementioned title in many features: The graphics section of Gray Matter were also the creative force behind Technocop.
This time the Anderson-Gray-Turner trio has put together a behind-the-car racer and a side-scrolling walker. Actually, Technocop came out first of the two. Which one is better is totally up to you, dear reader!
And now, onto the game...
You are technocop, the toughest of the tough, the meanest of the mean, the man-made-machine (or at least a man-equipped-with-deadly-magnum- radar-netgun-combo).
And you better be tough since you're facing the baddest of the bad, the punks of the street gang DOA that have a nasty habit of capturing innocent grannies, constructing wall-mounted-rideable gun turrets in condemned buildings and generally trying to kill every technocop in sight. And you don't see other technocops nearby.
But we're not there yet! The show gets on the road (yes! pun intended!) with you in your VMAX vehicle that suspiciously looks like a certain italian sportscar. You got to glue the gas pedal to the floor trying to reach the crime scene some miles away in time to deal some serious justice.
80's techno fantasy in action! Akira dashboard, anyone?
The road is laden with cars, trucks and occasional motorcycles, all of which for some reason are hostile towards our friendly neighbourhood technocop. Guess all those speeding tickets finally broke the camel's back, so to say.
To counter fire with fire, the VMAX comes with a nicely crunking cannon that can and must be used to blast those suckers to kingdom come before they get alongside and sideswipe you to the bushes, damaging your precious jalopy.
From wheels to heels
If you didn't crash once too often, you should've made it to the first crime scene. Congrats! Now you're on foot, the baddies soon come swarming and you've got options. As Shakespeare with his Hamlet once pondered 'To be or not to be?', you as the technocop must mull over the decision whether to kill or not to kill.
Namely, in addition to your trustworthy Magnum .88 slugslinger, you haul around a human-friendly net gun which you can switch to use with a flick of the spacebar. The enemies wielding whips, axes, knives and similar everyday items withstand a few blasts from your magnum, but are felled by a single shot of the net gun, turning them into rather repulsively twitching human baggages.
As for the Magnum, it turns the gangsters into something completely different. Take a guess.
The finest of 1988... Photorealism in lower left corner.
The radar in your oversized wrist watch is the most useful tool since it shows the direction the main perpetrator is located. It also shows the time you've left to nab him before he slips through your fingers. In addition other vital information is displayed including the 'jump bar'. Technocop is not manufactured in Omni consumer Products so he is vulnerable and can die from just a hit on the head with an axe.
To counter this little flaw though, he is able to perform "Way of the exploding fist" -style jumps over most dangers. The jump bar shows how much energy the Techie has left to jump around before he must catch his breath.
If you were fast and lucky enough, you're facing the level boss. Beware! They're cunning and cowardly lot with each one of them packing different special methods of knocking you cold. We're talking swords, flame throwers and trash cans here, baby.
No matter how your level turns out, you can always return to your VMAX and ride on to the next level, providing you still are in the books of living. Successfully apprehending or butchering the level boss does help with this goal though, since it is a deed rewarded with a much needed extra life. Plus with every cop's dream: A promotion...
Remember that 'D' button
The gameplay is hectic with the clock ticking to make sure you don't tarry on the way. Thankfully, Technocop stays fun for being one of those games that is easy to learn but hard to master. Also, the ability to save and restore the game makes this game so much more playable especially in the later levels where some mapping is needed to root out the evil DOA bosses from their filthy lairs of iniquity.
You can enter the save menu by pressing D, but only when on road. Guess the programmers needed these kinds of cryptic button options back in the day just to discourage those accursed souls that pirated software and thus lacked the very useful manual. What, me? Nee-ver.
You're out of the car, Techie. Too late to save now.
The driving part is the weaker of the two. However, it's not half bad. The action is fast and fun enough and especially in the later levels where a maniacal DOA gangstah can jump on your vehicle to trash it, the going gets quite challenging. It is easier to score extra lives from indoor missions than to keep your vehicle in working order since it gets only partially repaired between levels.
Where the driving part falls short though is variance. After a few levels it gets quite repetitive to blaze through even longer and longer stretches and the mostly unchanging scenery won't help either. The bonus equipment you get for good performance are quickly seen and soon, the driving becomes a necessary bad between the real fun: the indoors action.
Not too original, but fun
The walk-and-shoot provides the best fun Technocop can offer. The controls work quite fluidly and good old Techie shoots his gun as rapidly as you can hammer the fire button. Although berated as unnecessarily violent gore-fest in its time, nowadays those bad guys breaking into crimson pools of guts look less nightmare-inducing, more like clumsily cute clumps of pixels.
The graphics have tongue-in-cheek mentality all around, not the least with the level bosses that range from strange to surreal. It's also a welcome change to have people in the buildings that are not enemies: little kids with their baseball caps, grannies in their fur coats, baby carriages and so on. Now, you could always shoot them...
There are some glitches, especially when you are standing close to an enemy. You might get stuck for a while into him, which is bad when he
is simultaneously hitting your skull with an axe, or conversely the enemy's knives might go straight through you, which makes things a little easier,
but doesn't improve the feeling of quality.
Whips are a common household equipment hereby.
The difficulty level grows in a nice, linear fashion. Starting from a minimalistic hut, by level ten the buildings have grown into vast underground complexes that require an eidetic memory or solid mapping to play through.
Other than the fun graphics in the building section there is hardly anything really new in the two game sections of Technocop: The games themselves are quite generic. But they are well executed and most importantly, fun to play. Also, in 1988, which was quite novel was a successful marriage of two different game genres itself.
And as for the marriage... Maybe not between heaven and hell, more like between a valve adjustment and actually riding the motorcycle!
 |
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
It is a twofold judgement here: Although they share some sprites, the driving part's graphics are monotonous, whereas the building parts have many varying sprites with some funny details like gigantic rats and trembling grannies.
Of which the latter you can shoot.
|
|
|
The bangs and clangs aren't
the most memorable part of this particular piece. They are a solid, ok job, the engine and gun sounds being the best of the mediocre lot.
No music.
|
|
|
The ticking clock keeps things fast and sizzling, The technocop shoots fast and snappily and the difficulty level is quite spot-on. All this with an ability to save makes Technocop a fun game for a bang or two.
|
|
|
| None too original, but manages to be an ok to good game in both sections. A fun way to spend some hours on a rainy day at work. (What, me? Nee-ver.) |
|
|
 |
 |
|
Get Amiga Forever with pre-installed Workbench, games, applications, and much more.
It also contains the original Amiga ROM-files, 100% legally!
|
|
|
|
