Game Review: Panther (ZX Spectrum, Mastertronic)

Panther is an isometric 3-D shooter, where you are tasked with flying over the terrain in your Ground Attack Ship.  As the last remaining pilot of the Federation Force who can fly this machine, it’s all down to you (sounds familiar!)  The aim is to rescue as many stranded people as possible from the ground by landing nearby.

You will very rarely see someone just on the ground alone.  If you do though, land on the ground and that person will run towards your ship to be rescued.  This obviously scores you points.

Also, landing near building sometimes meant just get people could appear and run towards your ship as well.  At one time, three did when landed at the same spot (one after the other).

Hover Bother

Your attack ship and the enemies fly at different altitudes, and you will always see a shadow beneath them.  The higher you go, the faster you whizz over the landscape.  The shadows never actually change size so you can’t tell what exactly what height you are at.  This causes a bit of an issue as it is quite tough to shoot the enemy in 3-D as not only do they effectively, left and right but also up and down quite a lot.

Shoot at the wrong height and you’ll miss.  The enemy tends to fire (which you’d expect when you are on the same altitude as them) but for you as the player, it is quite difficult and relied a bit on luck to hit an alien craft and destroy it.

Playability

Depending on which side of the screen you are on, makes a difference to the rate you can fire shots.  When on the left-hand side of the screen, you have little vision ahead but can fire more often.  The opposite applies on the other side of the screen.  When you fire, your shot travels much longer up the screen before it disappears of the screen (unless you hit something).

The controls are responsive, but it takes time to get the altitude right when facing enemy craft.  From what I noticed, up to three could be on the screen at once.

What does let Panther down though is that the collision detection isn’t perfect and that really doesn’t help in a 3D environment.  When missiles fly diagonal down the screen, you can be a fair distance away and still be struck down by one of them.

A Whole Lot of Nothing Going On

For an arcade style game, where the inlay cover on the back boasts a “3-D scrolling mega shoot-em-up“, that really has been hyped up to try and sell the game!  Yes, it scrolls quickly (depending on the height you are at) but a mega-shoot-em-up is taking it way to the extreme.  Yes, the ground below shifts quickly at height.

Far too often, it can seem like an absolute age before you get to see the next attack wave.  When there no aliens are on the screen, you can’t crash, so don’t even have to avoid anything you are flying over (such as buildings, churches and trees etc.)  This really can make it boring for quite a while.

The Screen Displays

In the bottom-left hand corner of the screen, there is a scanner.  This displays you and the enemies as white dots and being an isometric game, moving left and right, moves your dot diagonally across the scanner.  There is no colour differentiation here (which would have been a reasonable thing to do here, I think).  Despite all being white dots, it doesn’t really matter as you need to keep an eye on the main playing area.

Besides the score, you’ll also see the number of humans which you have rescued and in the right-hand side, the number of remaining lives you have.  Just below that, is the amount of enemy attack waves you have encountered.

Scrolling Messages

There is a small panel where scrolling messages appear.  Right at the start, you’ll see Rescue Mission Engaged and when you encounter the first wave of enemies, you’ll see is Alpha Wave Launched.  If you crash and burn, you’ll lose a life and Phoenix Manouver [sic] Completed.

Sound Effects Only

When a message starts scrolling across, you will hear a tapping noise until the message has finished.  There is a sound effect which lasts for a couple of seconds when you either collide or are shot by the enemy.

When a shot is fired by you, you’ll hear a higher pitched sound.

Loading Screen and Graphics

Panther has a reasonable loading screen with detailed targeting an enemy spacecraft locked in its sights.  Some nice use of colour too.  This is where the colour stops though as the game itself is played over a monochrome playing area.  The only different being the colours around the edges.  A couple of sparking electrical currents zap in a couple of areas across at the top of the screen.

The main playing screen area is purely monochrome (yellow and black throughout).  This can make it rather difficult to spot people, even when they are running towards your ship as they tend to blend into the surface terrain.

The sprites for the buildings, churches, rocks and aliens look fine.  The missiles (which look like comets, look the best though).

Don’t Get Spaced Out

I discovered (accidentally) that if you pressed Space on the keyboard, it quitted the game back to the main menu.

Although you can re-define the keys, it does allow you to press Space for Up, Down, Left or Right.  So just say, I chose Space as a direction or to fire, it would go straight back to the start!  A slight design bug there, I think!

Screenshots on the Back Cover

Panther displayed graphics from another computer on the back of the cassette cover.  I maybe wrong, but on this occasion, it looks like Amstrad screenshots).  This was always a concern (for anyone one whose computer screenshots weren’t show!) on what you were going get.  Although the graphics aren’t bad on the Spectrum, I can see why on this occasion, they would have done that as the monochrome, wouldn’t have sold it.

I don’t think it was right that they got away with doing that, but at the end of the day, sales are what they were after and that probably did help shift a few Spectrum copies in my opinion.

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