Game Review: Pulse Warrior (Commodore 64, Mastertronic)

Pulse Warrior was the first of two games to feature pulses and pulse lasers with Pulsoids being released later on. For this game, an initial look at the Pulsoids cassette inlay and its screen shots would make you think that you are getting a shoot-em-up, especially with the bas relief graphics being synonymous with so many shooters at the time. As Invade-a-Load greets you during loading, it is only as you read the instructions that the game becomes clearer – and it is not actually a shooter at all, any shooting happens during playing the loading game.

The game does not have a title screen to speak of, just an image of the first screen of the space platform, together with some rather nice music from Steve Barrett. It has sampled drums and also a huge “doish!” sample at the end of the tune, and Steve would late remix this tune for use in SS Combat Simulator released by Codemasters, albeit without samples there. That title screen does give you an impression of the bas relief graphics used, which looks metallic and clean, and gives you some optimism for playing the game itself.

Finger on the Pulse

The plot of the game explains that you are the Pulse Warrior, and your craft has been hastily converted. You need to effectively gather the energy pulses that are around the space platform, building them up into deadly weapons to destroy the aliens. How do you do this? Well, the craft is basically a bas relief square block, and you can use this to deflect the pulses on screen towards the lenses – do that and it re-emits as a larger pulse, which you can then use to direct towards the box where the aliens try to land on – and then can destroy them on contact, allowing you to clear that section of the platform and keep it safe.

Your craft is of course hastily made, which means that you can only reflect so many pulses or a pulse of a certain size before the craft overheats. That then loses you energy, but it is not as straightforward to work out how this occurs straight away, and only after a few plays did I work this out. In the top right of the screen after the pulse wording, there are three coloured numbers, which correspond to the three zones on the map (red, yellow and blue.) Depending on which screen you are in, the energy decreases for that zone if you either reflect too many pulses, or the pulses regenerated are meaning overheating in a screen of a different zone. Time is of the essence as is speed, but having this explained in the instructions to a degree would have helped considerably.

Pulse Puzzles

Each of the screens has one of three different coloured backgrounds, depending on the zone they belong to. The start is a red zone screen, with orange, brown and yellow making up the graphics of the backdrops with some shadow effects too. Your craft is the square grey blob, with the pulses showing either going straight or diagonally. You will also see an alien droid on screen, which you need to avoid or one of your five lives will be lost. The lens is on this screen at the top, with the square which shows the aliens landing close to the bottom right. Once you get the hang of working out where to position the craft, deflection happens, the pulse goes into the lens, and after a couple of pulses, comes out quite large. You can then ensure this is directed into the square needed, with the alien ship showing destroyed. The background will go classic grey metallic once done to indicate this is completed.

The second screen is the blue zone, with both shades of the Commodore 64’s blue palette and cyan working well here, and looks pleasing on the eye. Generally, these are more difficult, and hence you have more energy available for those screens. The yellow zones, the first of which is to the right of this one, is the middle difficulty, and has a mix of yellow and green metallic graphic styles, which although looks functional does not quite work as the white coloured pulse can sometimes not be the easiest to see. Whilst I can see that it was to identify the zones, maybe the background of dark green instead of yellow, with the shadow effects being light green, may have worked better here.  Nonetheless the fact you can identify the zones like this does mean you can play the game two ways: either clear each screen as you find it, or concentrate on each coloured zone, starting with red, first.

Taking Your Pulse

There is a potential advantage of tackling each zone in colour order: once you complete a whole zone and destroy the aliens on each of the twelve screens needed, then you are awarded an extra life. The map is six squares by six squares, so thirty-six screens in all, with twelve of each colour in the zone to destroy. One good design decision is that you do not have to complete the screen you are in. Provided you can get past any alien droids, you can move freely to the next screen and tackle that, or move to another screen. This allows for tactics to take on each zone at a time should you wish to do so. Because the blue zone starts with more energy, with a realisation you may need longer time to clear or get to that zone, then you may wish to take those screens on last.

The joystick controls are responsive and there is a little inertia there as you move in one direction and this means you can accelerate past some of the droids to get to where you need to be. When you view the map screen to move around, the number next to the zone colour shows the current degree of difficulty, so this can increase as time progresses. Time as they say is of the essence. On the whole, deflecting the pulses works well and there are different parts of each screen which can mean that the pulse rebounds differently, or even a deflection can be off angle if the pulse itself pushes your craft a little bit, so a keen eye and control works. I was able to clear a fair number of screens by working out which pulse was easier to direct to the lens, and then could be used to destroy the alien craft square. It is definitely a game where you need to think, and the different nature may put people off.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Pulse Warrior are well drawn, and each screen of the space platform is carefully mapped out so going down one screen shows you at the right position on the next. The bas relief style works well apart from the yellow zone, where the yellow and green combinations do not work as well as the blue or the red zones do. The pulses move well and the alien droids are nicely animated or static, and are easy to spot with the collision detection being fair. The sound effects do have some nice noises for the deflections of the pulses themselves, and a little effect when destroying the alien craft. However, the main sound excellence here is from the title tune by Steve Barrett, with its drums and doish samples, it works well and plays along with a great melody to get you in the mood for some rocking. It is a shame the option does not appear to play the music in-game, but nonetheless, nice to listen to anyway.

Final Thoughts

Pulse Warrior certainly shows that you can create a different and original puzzle game, keeping it space themed, whilst also offering a good-sized map and a suitable challenge. It would have been helpful had the instructions explained some of the gameplay elements in more detail, and so less confusing when you first play. Once you do get into the game and work out a suitable tactic for deflecting the pulses into the lenses and the aliens, you can get further each time. The risk and reward you may take to try and either do the screens as you find them or concentrate on one zone at a time means you can have your own challenging game, whichever way you play – and that freedom of movement helps. It is not a game for everyone, and you may find it just too odd for your taste, but if you like a puzzle game and want to try something different, then this may just be the game for you.

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