

                          {UHIGHWAY ENCOUNTER}U  - Preview



Highway Encounter has a simple plot. You control a droid or Vorton, which has

the simple task of takin an explosive device from one end of a straight road to

the enemy base at the other. If the device is succesfully delivered then the

enemy advance will be halted and you will have won. You view the action from an

oblique aerial angle, seeing one complete section of read at a time. In all you

have a total of five droids under your command, but you can only directly

control one at any given time. The remaining droids are automatically programmed

to push the device down the centre of the road until they meet an obstruction

whereupon they come to a dead stop. The control droid is steered in a similar

way to the robot in Alien 8. To move in a given direction you must first rotate

until the droid is facing the appropriate way and then move forward. This is a

difficult system to come to terms with: the droid reacts as if subject inertia,

and it takes some time to accelerate to full speed and seemingly even longer to

come to a halt. At first sight the game looks very simple - so long as the road

ahead is clear the explosive device and automatic droids will make their way

down the middle of the road. They will only stop if their path is blocked, as it

frequently will be.  Most of the blockages are caused by large barrels and boxes

left lying around but very soon you realise that although these objects are a

pain the can in fact be put to very good use. You see, the enemy aren't just

sitting back waiting for you and your bomb to turnp up on their doorstep... they

have some pretty smart defence systems waiting for you. The first type take the

form of stationary mines, if you colide with one then you lose a droid and will

have to take over one of the automatic ones. The mobile mines are a bit more of

a problem, they slide back and forth across the width of the road and while you

can dodge them with the controlled droid, the only way of ensuring a safe

passage for the rest of your party is to block the mines in against the wall

with boxes or barrels. Generally the controlled droid can nudge objects along

the road, but it is often quicker to manoeuver them into place by firing laser

bolts at them. Sometimes more than one object can be moved at a time, but the

whole operation becomes a lot slower.  Beware of the objects that looks like

boxes but in fact melt when fired at. The laser fires in bolts of three blasts,

each blast sending out a sort of hairly bullet thingy which hits home with

devastating effect. However, after firing a burst of three bolts the laser

pauses briefly to re-charge and this can be a bit of a problem when it comes to

dealing with the third type of defence system - the enemy's droids.

The enemy machines come in all shapes and size, and some just seem to wander

about while others actively hunt for you. They vary in the way theymove, while

some droids are prepared to try a frontal assault and are easy to take care of,

others sneak up on you while their allies draw your fire. Clearing a path along

the highway becomes progressively more difficult. To start with, you find it

fairly easy to move items around to block the mines off, later on, not only do

mines appear in larger groups, but they move more erratically and your attempts

to trap them will be hampered by ever increasing numbers of nasties attacking

you. To make matters worse the game has a limit time for completion. The amount

of time remaining is shown by a bar graph on the lower part of the screen.

Within the same area you are told how many droid Vortons you have left and which

of the 30 zones you are in. Points are awarded according to how may droids have

reached which zone. The more droids you have surviving and the nearer the end of

the road they are, the more points you will score.  



Michiel, FidoNet: 2:283/502

