Hewson were a Software House that released exceptional titles and Andrew Braybrook and his Graftgold label are names synonymous with excellent C64 games: Uridium, AlleyKat and Gribbly's Day Out most notably. Paradroid is by a long chalk his best amidst a quartet of absolute classics.
If you have not played this game on the C64 - you need to download the emulator RIGHT NOW, download this .t64 file and boot it up - you have never played anything like it. Ever.
Except possibly Ranarama, but that's another story (and review).
Hewson were a Software House that released exceptional titles and Andrew Braybrook and his Graftgold label are names synonymous with excellent C64 games: Uridium, AlleyKat and Gribbly's Day Out most notably. Paradroid is by a long chalk his best amidst a quartet of absolute classics.
If you have not played this game on the C64 - you need to download the emulator RIGHT NOW, download this .t64 file and boot it up - you have never played anything like it. Ever.
Except possibly Ranarama, but that's another story (and review)...
Paradroid quite simply, is the best game of its ilk across all platforms.
The premise of the game is that a deep space ship has malfunctioned and all of the humans have been killed by the droids
who were once subservient on the ships decks. The humans back at base camp need to recover their ships, but all attempts have resulted in death and failure. So the Techie Bods come up with a new droid, numbered 001 which primary function is to influence the circuitry of the other droids running amok on the spaceships.
With a two-pop bog standard laser and the ability to 'take over' any other droid, 001 is beamed aboard the first ship in the fleet...
Straight away, with Paradroid, you are struck by the vision and the ability of the programmer to portray the chilling idea of the background story - the title screen has no music, just a recurrent off-tone humming - there is in fact no music, apart from some tiny (and tinny) spot FX indicating the start of a new game. This is absolutely atmospheric and if you sit playing with all the lights off (sod the health warnings - remember those as kids! Yeah, er... ok.), music up, on a large tv - load it up, press fire and off you go. The eerie background ship and droid noises make the game what it is - take the lift to the wrong deck, usually pinks and yellow bas-relief colour schemes and the difference in droid noise is almost palpable - get out, or start firing!
So how does it play? You move around each deck of the ship, taking over, or destroying all of the droids. When you've done so, you find a lift and move down, or up to the next deck (remembering what you've cleared and what you haven't). A colour deck indicates (as does droid noise) activity, a greyed out and silent deck (instantly recognisable (the spot FX of clearing the deck is brilliant: boooooe...)) indicates a cleared deck.
So, you start with 001, and transfer (take over), or shoot (or ram) the droids into destruction. And then we have - the transfer Game...
Holding down the fire button changes your usual white droid (all other droids are black and numbered), to flashing grey and a spot FX indicates you're in transfer Mode (and it even says so at the top of the screen!), touch any droid and you enter the transfer game.
Watch the timer clicking down initially, to choose your side - left, or right. Choose well, as when the timer hits the bottom, the game is on and you have to fire your charges into the centre post, turning one node to your colour. If you end up with more nodes lit (the top middle, larger node changes colour to say who is currently winning) as the timer runs out - you win and 'take over' the droid. If you don't - burnout - the enemy droid is always destroyed and if you're 'on' another droid - that dies. If it's just the little, old 001 Influence Droid - it's game over. Higher value droids have more charges to fire. You know you're good at the game, when you can 'Take Over' the Command Cyborg (999) with the Influence Droid (001).
This absolutely makes the game. Higher value droids have quicker latent death time (amount of time you can 'control' them) and all droid energy is noted by how quickly the bars around the droids spin.
When the 001 flashes white and grey and a warning pulse repeatedly sounds - get to a regeneriser - where you can use up score points to replenish energy.
Hold fire on a lift to enter the lift map, move up and down at your leisure. You'll learn where the hard decks are...
Hold fire next to a computer terminal and you can access maps of the ship you're on, the deck and a file on all droids below the current level of the one you are currently controlling. Makes great reading.
Higher droids have better armour and fire power. It is possible to ram smaller droids with Battle Droids in order to destroy them.
Killing high numbers of droids in a short space of time increases the Alert Level of the ship, changing the warning beacons from green to amber to red and increasing your score multiplier.
Clear all the decks of the first ship and move on to the rest.
You will load this game and play it often. You won't believe how often.
If ever a game deserved 100% - this one does.
