Rise Of The Triad

This is Apogee's entry into the Doom stakes. Again, the plot doesn't really matter; the object is to stay alive. The first thing in the game is to choose the level of violence. This ranges from none through some, a lor and excessive. Excessive is good. When you shoot the baddies, eyeballs fly off. But exactly what the baddies are supposed to be is confusing. They look like officers form the First World War. They wear greatcoats and stand sideways on to fire - like in a duel. One of the strengths of Rise of the Triads is the way it uses different levels of the game arena. There's a lot of running up free-standing staircases and a bizarre number of trampolines. Finding the exits is a real pain. I can't remember a game like it. There's lots of hidden areas concealing food and weapons.

But there's a dilemma - it's not that good. Don't get me wrong, it's better than most shareware. The problem is that the learning curve is very steep - it gets difficult quickly - and you really don't have much of an idea what you're supposed to be doing. The features such as looking up and down and falling off the playing area if you're not careful, are fine, but the game isn't much fun on your own. Network play is far far more exciting. In the shareware version you are restricted to playing one of five characters and ten levels. Registration gets you the chance to play any of the characters and there are 32 game levels. It also brings network support for 1I players.

Apogee say it could run on a 386DX/40. but recommend 4860x2 with 8mb ram and a local bus video card.