Game Review: UCM – Ultimate Combat Mission (ZX Spectrum, Mastertronic)

Opening Options Screen

Once U.C.M. has loaded, you are presented with a menu or control options and a scrolling message (with some attempt at humour about a fast-food chain and keeping share prices up whilst making the game!)

So, you’d think pressing there are option numbers would be simple to re-define the keys but no!  For some reason, you must choose 2 Players first and then re-define them for player 1 before choosing for player 2 (even if you only want to play in 1 player mode!).  To play a 1 player game, you can then press 2 for one player followed by 1 to start the game!  Hmmm.  Nothing’s ever simple in life and that applies here too!

Nice Loading Screen

This is very good indeed and shows both the Mandroid and Mercenary as if presented in an open booklet.  The differences between are the two are that one has a slightly wider open eye than the other.  I liked this and clearly some time and effort had been spent on this screen.

Graphics

These aren’t too bad and there is some animation to be seen.  In one player mode for example, you will see your character marching along and in two player mode, both characters march along in the top-left and top-right corners.

When you are shot, you see yourself spin for a couple of seconds before losing a life.  When its game over, the screen neatly disappears into a yellow swirl effect before doing dark.

The scrolling looks alright and both characters can move in horizontal, vertical and diagonal directions.

Your character looks quite good when jumping too. Amusingly, you will see at times, the enemy just run in a straight line and fall into the gaps as they can’t jump.

Playability

U.C.M. isn’t the most responsive in the world.  Don’t get me wrong, it is playable, but it could have been better and suffers from its slow speed.

In 2 player mode, the player furthest ahead must wait for the other player lower down to catch up.  This is fair enough although, although I feel the player further up the screen could have been given a bit more room to move around in.

The enemy and your character(s) appear to be able to shoot the same distance against each other.  Jumping does tend to help retreat a bit quicker.  When jumping, you travel just over a square in distance.

The bullets moving across the screen appear to be like little pebbles but never disappear into the background, so this is good.  Collision detection is passable (although not perfect), and nothing seems to just jump out of the blue and kill you at any time unexpectedly.

Music and Sound Effects

There are differences between the 48K and 128K versions, although not quite as you would probably expect!

Once the 128K version has opens, it has a good AY soundtrack.  Once playing the game, however, it only has sound effects when shooting.  There are a few short pieces of music when you go to start playing U.C.M. when it’s game over and also on the hi-score table too,

The 48K version has a couple of short pieces of music (not on the opening menu screen).  Again, these are when starting the game, game over and the hi-score table (all of which are rather good considering it’s on the standard beeper!).  Disappointingly though, there are no sound effects during gameplay.  Maybe the programmer though silence is golden as there is absolute zilch here to hear.

So, to sum up, there is music on both versions (not during gameplay) and the 48K version has no sound effects whatsoever.

What is Weird….

Even in one player mode, you’ll still see the score and remaining lives of player 2 at the bottom of the screen.  I think that small area should have been blanked out as you can’t just bring in another player whilst playing the game.

Variation

What U.C.M. does have is some variety as you move and scroll upwards further into the game.  There are areas where there is no ground, so you must either navigate your way around those areas jump over some parts.

These areas look quite reasonable, so it does give a bit more depth to the gameplay.  It’s not just a matter of running around anywhere you like in some places.

* * *

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: