Game Review: Los Angeles SWAT (ZX Spectrum, Entertainment USA)

Not Quite Rolling Out the Red Carpet

Once you start a new game, it doesn’t have the background drawn out ready.  Instead, a very slow scrolling background gradually beings to draw out the road, buildings and pavement to create the screen.  I timed this to be around eleven seconds before you could start playing the game.

Bear in mind, that every time you start a new game, you must go through that each time, and this will quickly get on your nerves and can’t be skipped.  Although written in machine code, that part really does make BASIC look fast and I feel is totally unnecessary, so I don’t know who thought that’d be a good idea.

Out Of Control?

The keys aren’t mentioned in the inlay card, but it turns out, its simply the cursor keys and 0 to fire.  These are not re-definable and therefore you can’t change them.  Also, don’t press Q, or it’ll take you straight back to the main menu (once again, this isn’t mentioned.)  Yes, it’s handy if you chose the wrong controls from the main menu, but otherwise, you could accidently press this in error and ruin your game.

Playability

The speed of Los Angeles SWAT almost feels like you are playing in slow motion, and a tortoise could probably almost as quickly, in truth.  The inlay card suggests, which is all action joystick bending action.  Hmmm, an oversell here by the marketing team, I’d say and this probably left people who bought the game rather disappointed.

You SWAT character does react reasonably well to the controls.  When you shoot though, the bullets only go a short distance away from you, so you do need to get nearby to get a kill.  On a couple of occasions, you do get shot back at from buildings or barriers.  Talking of a kill, if a terrorist does kill you, they raise their arm in victory for a couple of seconds.

You begin the game with three lives.  You will see two other blue officers to the sides of you as you go along.  When you lose a life, one of them will move into position and takeover from where you lost your last officer.  Now, I did find that that sometimes happens, you can be blocked in from a terrorist so a few times, the game seemed to get stuck for a few seconds and even worse, if you appeared to walk back to where the enemy was, you’d lose a life too when not your fault.  Collision detection otherwise in the game isn’t perfect, although not a showstopper either.

Presentation

From the off, there is no loading screen.  Once the game has loaded, you’re presented with a colourful screen when deciding what controls you’d like to use (keyboard or a range of joysticks).

Graphics

The graphics are what I’d call average but certainly wouldn’t have won any rewards in my book.  I’d describe them as doing the job.  You can change at 45-degree angles, therefore allowing for horizontal, vertical and diagonally movements.  Neatly, when you do go to fire, your officer does crouch down and take aim and, in my opinion, that looked rather good.  A tick in the box for that one.

To be fair, the buildings along the side of the screen are (slightly) ok and the roadblocks are acceptable, with vehicles blocking the way through.

There is evidence of colour clash.  The most obvious areas are when someone walks past the lady on the pavements, when a grenade goes off on a building and when a grenade hits the ground.  I suppose you could say an explosion and a flash of colour may feel slightly realistic but it doesn’t look great to be fair.

Anyone Fancy a Twirl?

The enemy terrorists don’t just appear from the top of the screen moving down.  There are a few who make an entrance from the left and right sides between the buildings.  Rather strangely though, they amusingly seem to twirl around rather than look like they are running.

Mind Out for The Lady Civilian

Walking along the pavements from top to bottom, you’ll frequently see a lady in magenta.  If you accidentally shoot her, then that’ll cost -1000 points.  It does mention on the inlay that the shootout it’s on live TV so, I’m not sure quite what that would do to the channel’s ratings!

Sound Effects Only

There is no music on this Los Angeles SWAT, which is a shame.

When firing, there is a tapping noise but what is rather disappointing is when a grenade is thrown at you, it doesn’t make any sound whatsoever when it explodes!  A missed opportunity here to give the game a bit more realism.  Clearly, no effort was put into an audio perspective, and I know that even the humble Spectrum beeper could have made some type of noise.  Alas, you get absolutely zilch!

The Scoring System

As you progress along the road, you will gain points for just walking further.  Naturally, shooting the terrorists also gains you extra points too.  The score is displayed in the bottom-middle of the road.

When it is game over, you will be shown what score you got and below it, the high score too.

When you reach the end of the road and shoot the last few terrorists, your score and high score appear on the screen, almost as if it is game over.  The game then just repeats with more enemies on the screen.  It really didn’t take more than 3 minutes to get that far.

* * *

You know what we think but why not share your thoughts on this game! Let us know what you think of it in the comments below, or add your own score using the slider in the summary box at the top of the review!

Please follow and like us: