INFERNO

by

OCEAN

FORMAT: PC-PC/CD-ROM
DATE: DECEMBER 1994
PRICE: N/A

As all the other flight simulators released by Ocean, Inferno was designed by D.I.D., a UK based game developer. They created and developed famous titles such as Epic and T.F.X. and were the first to use flat-shaded polygon technology in their games. At that time, it was something rather new and exciting, but today what was innovative is just obsolete. Although the game runs easily on a 386 processor, it doesn't compare with the splendid titles like Tie-Fighter from LucasArts.

The first bad thing I noticed was the lack of support for the UltraSound card from Gravis. I wonder just how developers may not be aware of the existence of this card, while they do support other sound cards that nobody has ever heard of.

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The introduction of the game does not feature any full-motion video or cinematics with well-known Hollywood actors. The programmers used digitized pictures of sculpted characters for the Emperor, the Rexxon leader and his son, and yourself during the dialogues between the characters. In the cinematics, they chose rendered animated characters instead with three- dimensional texture mapped graphics for the backgrounds.

The historical background can be resumed in a few words. After their first defeat many years ago, the Rexxons are back with a vengeance and your task will be to stop their invasion. Therefore, you will pilot one of the most powerful spacecraft ever conceived, the Inferno. This fighter can fly in either space or the air of the planets, and offers you a great selection of weapons ranging from lasers to Megadeth, a devastating anti-matter device.

The universe where the action takes place is a whole solar system including ten planets, and the 700 missions featured in Inferno will walk you from planet to planet including deep space. During the game, as we said above, the program uses flat-shaded polygons for the landscapes and space fighters. It provides the game with lightning speed, but with the new standards brought out by a new generation of space simulators, it looks a bit outdated.

In the combat phase, there are many views available from internal cockpit to virtual cockpit through chase view, missile view, fly-by, etc. There are also options to help you during your flight such as the Auto-Waypoint, the Auto-Dock and the Auto-Combat which forces your ship to chase a locked target using adequate speed. The first two options are used to automatically dock and navigate to the waypoints.

Conclusion:

Inferno features amazing game speed (especially on a Pentium) that will satisfy the 386 users who can not play with Wing Commander 3 for example. If the game had been released one or two years ago, Inferno would have been a great success, but it does not match up with today's quality games.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

386 DX-33 MHz or better,
Min 4 MB memory,
MS-DOS 5.0 or later,
Hard drive required,
Single speed CD-ROM drive or faster (for CD version),
VGA 256 color graphic card and monitor,
Microsoft Mouse or 100% compatible,
Joystick, CH Flightstick Pro, Thrustmaster Flight Control System (FCS),
Thrustmaster Weapons Control System (WCS) supported.
Sound Blaster, Adlib and Roland sound cards supported.

Ratings and Publishers

                                    Ocean Ltd.,
 GRAPHICS ------------------ 75%    2 Castle St, Castlefield,
 SOUND    ------------------ 80%    Manchester, M3 4LZ, England.
 MUSIC    ------------------ 80%    Tel: +44-(0)61-832-6633
 GAMEPLAY ------------------ 80%
 INTEREST ------------------ 75%    Ocean of America Inc.,
                                    1870 Little Orchard St,
                                    San Jose, CA 95125.
 OVERALL ------------------- 78%    Tel: 408-289-1200