Game Review: Pulse Warrior (ZX Spectrum, Mastertronic)

Set in the 22^nd Century, Earth’s power needs are beamed to it from space.  Giant space platforms orbit around the sun, with powered relayed down by satellites.

Unfortunately, The Darak (who are hideous reptilian beings from Cirrus Major) have decided to attack the giant space platforms.  They had no defences as they were built for peaceful purposes, so this is where your hastily craft, The Pulse Warrior is sent out to defend them as the platforms too rely from the energy from the sun and are also under attack.

Having looked at the back of the inlay cover, it tends to give off a tiled mazed style of shoot ‘em up impression but don’t judge a book by its cover.

The Land of Confusion

Well, apart from a good background story, the instructions really don’t give you much information.  So, what is the game about then, I hear you ask?

Well, what you get is a maze, where your ship that looks like a rotating block and pulses which bounce horizontally, vertically and diagonally around the screen.  If you move into a horizontal or vertical pulse, it’ll change into a diagonal direction as a shot pulse.

The pulses increase in length when you successfully get a pulse to go into a lens.  If, however, that pulse goes through one of the side exits of the screen, then it’ll disappear, only to respawn as a small pulse from where it originated from.

Getting Into the Zone

When you start the game, you are presented with 36 rectangular sectors.  The game always begins from the top-left hand corner.  Each sector has a different coloured square (namely magenta, cyan, yellow and black and a number inside them.)  Whichever colour you are currently on makes the others of the same colour flash.  The number within it representing the current level of difficulty it is to complete.

Provided that there is an exit, you can move around the platforms.  You will then see the direction you travelled by the block where you were moving over to the one where you now are located.  Completed zones go black (with white backgrounds).

Playability

Your Pulse Warrior can move left, right up and down but not diagonally.  Although the controls are responsive and quick, it doesn’t always mean that you are in full control either.  Handy for zipping along but if you want to get around edges and corners, the lack of diagonal control shows.

When the pulses collide with your spacecraft, you will be nudged in the opposite direction, which is rather neat.  It adds a little depth to aiming the pulses too as you can’t just stand in the same place, adding to the gameplay.  If you’ve played Motos, it’s like the physics in that game.

Zone Countdowns

Each of the three sectors have a countdown, so the strategy on how you go about completing the game is a bit of a puzzle.  Unlike your usual timers that count down, there can be long pauses before they even start to countdown.

How you tackle each zone is part of the cleverness of the gameplay.  The countdown doesn’t just decrease in the zone that you are currently on, so get a move on.  The more you play it, the more you’ll work out where to place yourself and what routes are best available to you.

Sound Effects and 128K Music

As the pulses bounce around the walls and hit your block, you will hear puck style sound effects.  Hear it and you’ll know what I mean.

Although the 128K version has an AY tune, it starts of alright.  I emphasise “starts” of alright.  This is because if you want to hear the tune properly, just sit on the first screen and don’t move.

For some unbeknownst reason, once you start playing a little way into the game, the music just descended into a total mess and out of sync.  Flat notes and horrible pitched noises can be heard whilst also playing at different speeds and its horrible on the ears.  A reasonable tune becomes a  dreadful mess.  This happens on a real Spectrum and its not just an emulator being up to no good.

Out of all the Spectrum games that I’ve played with AY music, this is the only game I’ve ever encountered where the tune has gone this totally wrong and as out of sync.

Graphics

These have a “blockyness” to them (yes, I know that’s not a real word) and it isn’t always clear where on the screen you are.  This isn’t helped either by flickery graphics.  The enemy droids on some screens move quite quickly and they flicker quite a bit too being slightly off putting.

On the plus side though, the dotted pulses do bounce around the screen very well and fortunately, these don’t suffer from flickering.  Around the side of playing area, a starfield moves right to left at a decent speed, giving a sense of speed and depth.

The animation is therefore much better than the graphics being played themselves.

A Long Wait for The Loading Screen

The main loading screen appears right near the end of loading the game.  This seems odd as it could have been on the screen for a lot longer.  Once the game has loaded, pressing any key changes the blocks Pulse Warrior into a rotating green, cyan, yellow and white effect.  Pressing any key again, goes to the main menu.

Press Q at your peril

The controls are up, down, left, right and fire.  Although you can re-define the keys, the letter Q can’t be used as it is for quitting the game. Pressing Q aborts the game (without asking if you are sure) and results in an aborted mission and its game over.  As someone who usually uses Q, A, O, P and N to fire, not being able to use Q isn’t ideal!

Oddly as well, when selecting the keys for different directions, I was able to select the same key 5 times for all of them.  So for example, I chose Z for left and all the others could also be selected as Z.  Also, choosing X appears as a Z on the screen as well!

To make matters worse, after each game, the re-defined keys didn’t appear to work for a second go.  Unless I’m missing something, this meant resetting to reload again!  I suggest opting to use the Kempston joystick instead.

Final Thoughts

Whilst this is a rather creative theme (with a spacecraft acting like breakout), it is seriously flawed in places where it truthfully has no real excuse to be.  From displaying the wrong keys when re-defining the keyboard and not being able to play a second time using those same re-defined keys is shameful.  In addition to the 128K AY music that goes totally out of sync, it’s a real disappointment and surely something that should have been picked up before being released.

Pulse Warrior does have a sequel called Pulsoids and if you read our reviews in the order that they are released, that review is to come soon.

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