Game Review: Frenesis (Commodore 64, Mastertronic)

Frenesis was originally released on the Atari XL/XE series first, with the Commodore 64 version being next and closely followed with the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 – which I suspect was the original version of the game.  Part of the reasoning was that Tony Takoushi’s other Commodore 64 title, Hyperforce (a conversion from the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 version) was released at the same time.  This made sense due to the plots of both involving the use of the Statron, which was a common theme.

The plot is the same as the other versions – so in effect, you need to ensure that the aliens avoid contact with the cross, which appears on screen with four areas where aliens can roam for the cross to be hit.  Your weapon is called the Statron, which you can move up and down or left and right which sweeps along the screen.  To destroy an alien, the Statron’s arrows must be facing the alien.  So, if your arrows are pointing right, the aliens coming left will collide and you will kill them, unless they are one type of alien, the 30s, who want to come back for more.  You can switch axis easily by changing direction, so if sweeping right using the horizontal axis, pressing up or down will use the vertical axis instead.

Tee Total

As with the other versions, the status display in the top middle of the screen shows two numbers.  The first is how many aliens you have removed, and the second is the target that you need to reach to complete the level.   If the aliens reach the cross though, this number will increase accordingly, making the target higher.  There is a time limit too, displayed by a decreasing bar of time to the top right, and if you run out of time before you eliminate the required number of aliens, then the Statron explodes and that is one of your lives lost accordingly, so you do need to act quite fast, but this will become more of a problem as you will find out.

Colour Clash

One of the immediate and noticeable differences here is that due to the more limited colour palette, what splashes out at you on the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 is more muted here.  The get ready screen does its wipe but feels less exciting and drab, and the level complete screen showing masses of colour is just replaced by thick coloured bars.  It looks okay but does not have that impact in the same way.  Each alien shows as a square with triangles (and thereby pointing its direction it came from) along with the main crosses, which are much whiter than anything else, and the Statron itself just in pink and no other colour.

Slowing It Down Slightly

The other comparison worthy of note is the speed of the game.  On the Commodore 16 and Plus/4, once you have worked out what to do, the game’s speed really does help you get to the awkward aliens, especially with some switching directions and giving you a fighting chance of getting far.  The Statron here moves a little bit slower, not noticeable at first but although this does mean you can get used to the game a little more, it also means in a lot of cases you cannot stop the aliens hitting the cross, thereby increasing your target number.

As you progress, level four introduces a different type of alien, the killer plungers, which move across the screen in steps of three and can only be destroyed on the last step.  Often, these do reach the cross and increase the number of aliens you need to destroy, which does make the level more difficult.  However, help can be at hand with the mega annihilating smart bomb.  You can press fire to activate this – with some levels only allowing this once, which clears the aliens on screen, but you do not score anything for those destroyed.  You will need to note though that due to the slower pace here, this level onwards becomes very difficult, and it becomes a case of more luck than judgement as to where the aliens appear on screen and where your Statron is.

Statron Stuttering

Even though the gameplay plays a little bit slower, just trying to remember the direction that the arrow of your Statron is facing just means that you end up just pressing left or right and then swapping with up and down as you need, or waggling the joystick constantly to try and eliminate all you can see.  Surprisingly this proves more effective than you would think and becomes almost an entirely separate method.  The more random nature of the aliens appearing also means that if that target number increases too much, it becomes even more tedious and dull, purely because you cannot increase the number killed quickly enough.  The gameplay becomes turgid as a result.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Frenesis are dull and somewhat washed out.  The presentation suffers from this especially, with those screens looking somewhat slapdash, less pop and focus during gameplay, although the use of the mega annihilating smart bomb does have a nice visual effect and at least shows some attention to detail.  There are some sound effects both for the introduction to the game as well as when using the Statron during play, but there is also an annoying low drone that plays throughout the game here, which is just painful to hear after a few seconds and will have you reaching for the volume control instantly.  The random sound effects that form the “music” on the title screen does nothing more than annoy in equal measures as well.

Final Thoughts

Although the idea of Frenesis does come across as original and different, and using the Statron to protect the cross and sweep across the aliens to remove them, the execution is lacking, and even more so than it did on the Commodore 16 and Plus/4.  The lack of colour and the more muted pace of the game really does make it suffer, with the game resulting in more of desperate joystick waggling to try and make sense of the random alien patterns that come on.  That slightly slower pace may get you familiar, but once you realise that you cannot do anything on some of the levels to defeat the aliens it becomes an exercise in both frustration and boredom in equal measures.  It is clearly an attempt to be a Jeff Minter inspired game but lacks all the execution and polish that would have been there, and it is also a wasted opportunity to make the idea work.  If you really do need to play this game, then the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 one is the version to try.

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