Game Review: Subterranea (Commodore 64, Rack-It)

The Rack-It label was starting to get noticed amongst budget conscious games players, especially with some of the games such as Anarchy and Sunburst receiving good reviews.  And when you looked at the screen shots on the back inlay for Subterranea, you would not fail to be impressed.  Sixteen levels (or caverns as the instructions calls it) to shoot through, although the plot on the back of rescuing trapped miners and destroying rogue mining droids appears of a bit of a misnomer, as in the game itself there are no miners or droids at all.

There is a pretty loading screen as the game loads, and on the title screen, well someone has definitely been inspired by Metallica, with the logo of the game itself looking suspiciously like the Metallica logo from the Ride the Lightning album, even with the same hues of blue present.  There is a scrolling message which you can change the speed of by moving the joystick, as well as a nice title tune from Jonathan Dunn, who was soon to be working for Ocean as their full-time musician.  In fact, the tune here was typical of his earlier work and is very catchy.

Caverns of Carnage

Pressing fire sets you off on your mission into the first cavern.  At the start of each level and each life you do have a shield which goes down, but at least gives you some invulnerability so that you do not suffer instant death, which is good.  As you make your way through, there are waves of enemies to be shot. These do not reveal any extra firepower though – you get what you are given, and that is it.  You can occasionally fire a double bullet when moving your ship up, as it appears to be on its side briefly, but this can sometimes be more luck than judgement in firing that shot.  And whilst the backgrounds are nice, they also are to be avoided, as colliding with them results in the loss of one of your five ships.  And sadly, you will do that often.

There are parts of each cavern that require obstacles to be passed. Some of these can be shot where they have the control box icon (shown as a C) – and this temporarily disables that obstacle, usually some form of wall that appears.  Other obstacles can be shot to create a path for the ship to pass though, and others seem to be impossible to pass, but you can pick up an extra shield to navigate here. There is normally a small square with an E on it which indicates energy, but in fact this brings back the shield, so you can use that time to skip past the obstacle that otherwise would have cost you one of the five ships.

Brucie Bonus

Once you reach the end of each cavern, a bonus section appears.  Here, you need to shoot the flashing targets on the enemy guardian, within a time limit, to destroy it.  This is either normally a target in the centre, or three, with one at the top and bottom and the other in the centre.  Lining up your bullets here to destroy the guardian’s targets is key – as it often spawns more small obstacle blobs for you to shoot in order to get to the target, so speed is also of the essence.  The first few of these are not too difficult, and you do get an extra ship if you shoot it down successfully.  That at least does mean that you are able to rack up a reasonably decent score.

Skitty Sensation

The controls should normally feel smooth for a shoot-em-up, so that you feel in full control.  Unfortunately, and especially considering there are some tight areas to get the ship through, the controls are somewhat skittish, with the ship not moving smoothly and delicate touches to try and line yourself up for the small narrow sections are needed.  More often than not, if you line yourself up to be able to shoot the control box (C) icon, it is often a case you may go too low or too high because of this, hit the background, and that is one of the ships lost.  Sometimes too, the collision detection does not feel quite right either and can be too much in favour of any minor collision with the background resulting in a loss of a ship too.  These issues could have easily been sorted for playability, but feels a little bit like it was not tested properly.

Difficulty Dilemma

The game also appears to have a dilemma in which way round some of the caverns have their difficulty level set.  The first one has a couple of delicately tight sections where you could very easily lose a ship, especially close to the very end. On the other hand, the second one I was able to do repeatedly without the loss of a ship and be able to steer clearly and accurately through the parts I needed to.  The fourth cavern has a number of really tight gaps to go through, and by the time you reach the sixth cavern, it becomes more of a memory test and a case of luck rather than judgement due to the controls letting you down at the worst possible time.  Unfortunately, even with infinite lives to assist you, the later caverns just become a tedious effort to wade through and much less of an enjoyable challenge – more like a technical demo than a playable game, which is a shame.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Subterranea are well defined, from the loading screen to the Metallica inspired title screen, and in the levels themselves, with some distinct styles and colours being present. Whilst not quite as on par with, say, Zynaps, it does at least have a colour style of its own and in addition, the enemies and your ship are well drawn and animated.  The sound effects are a little weedy during the game and maybe an option to have the excellent title theme playing during the game instead would have been a nice option to have.

Final Thoughts

Subterranea is a classic case of a shoot-em-up promising a lot, especially when you look at the static screen shots, but delivering a lot less than you would expect.  Yes, all the polish is there and it certainly looks and sounds good. Ultimately, your time and patience will be tested as you attempt to master the safest route through each cavern with the loss of as few lives as possible.  The skittish controls let the game down a lot, and added to the difficulty level present, it really does become boring and tedious after a while, as you will get so far and not be able to progress without some form of cheating.  There are better shoot-em-ups on the Rack-It label which should be checked out instead of this one, which is a wasted opportunity.

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