Review by none other then Jeff Minter, creator of Tempest 2000 for the Jaguar!
(This review was copied from his own personal web page, as he gave permission to include his postings elsewhere.)
12 Jan 1997: Once
More Into the Web
What follows is the text of the Tempest X3 review that I posted
to rec.games.video.sony, followed by some additional comments.
You might find this review to be a bit more critical than my
usual reviews, but there is a good reason for this - I happen to
have designed Tempest 2000, the game upon which Tempest X3 is
based, so I am intimately familiar with the implementation of the
gameplay, and the game is close to my heart, so I am inclined to
be a bit picky. Where it has been changed in a way that I feel is
detrimental to the game, I tend to rant about it. But don't get
me wrong - I think TX3 is a mighty fine game, and I'm just being
opinionated about the way I think things should have been done. I
am also mildly miffed that I was not included in the test/tweak
endstage of TX3's design, since I could have prevented at least
one major glitch getting into the original T2K mode and maybe
offered some suggestions for enhancements to the original design
for X3 mode. Oh well, I'll address those things when I do Tempest
3000... ;-) Okay, here it is:
Tempest X3 - The Definitive
Review I finally got ahold of this game this morning, and I've
just taken it up to a million odd and have seen enough of the
game that I feel qualified to offer comment. The game is
basically Tempest 2000 with extra PlayStation-oriented graphics
effects, plus a few extra enemies (that I've seen so far, I'm at
level 47) and some subtractions, which I will get to later. The
Webs are rendered with translucent, warping textures in the
panels instead of the Gouraud shading of the original, and shots
fired down the Web light up the textures in a most pleasing
manner. The whole game scene is rendered in a persistance/blur
field, which is cranked up at certain times (such as firing your
Superzapper) and which makes everything go a bit psychedelic,
which is what we would expect in any game based on T2K :-). There
is also a mild plasma around the edges of the screen that is
subtle but tasty. The pixel-shatter explosions and effects in the
original have largely been replaced by polygon-based effects,
which, combined with the aforementioned blur field, look very
nice indeed, and when the going gets hectic and lots of things
are blowing up (as they should be in any good game) the display
becomes agreeably trippy. The "2000" and
"Excellent" messages are now rendered in a translucent
plain font - which looks OK, but I think I still prefer the
shattering originals. The Webs themselves are a variety of
different shapes, typically less angular than the T2K webs - and
there are more of them. Whilst having more webs is nice, I think
that on the whole the web shapes are a bit tamer than in T2K - I
would have liked to have seen more of the folding-onto-themselves
type that were such bastards in T2K. So far I haven't come across
any "hate webs" - in T2K every now and again you'd come
across a web that was *such* a bastard, you'd always say to
yourself, "God, I *hate* this bloody web!" and it'd
often be a sticking point, and you'd get a most excellent feeling
of relief when you got by the sucker. I kinda miss the hate webs.
Mind you, maybe I'll discover some above level 47 :-) The audio
is of course improved from the original T2K, being as the choons
are now delivered from the CD-ROM, allowing the use of the
upgraded versions that were on the T2K audio CD. Those tunes
still kick ass! Can't beat a nice drop o' techno for a game like
this. Some of the audio FX have been changed, and by and large
the new FX are good - nice solid meaty samples. The only noise I
don't like too much is the noise that the Pulsars make - I reckon
it should be much more deep and threatening ;-) Okay, on to the
gameplay. Now, I am going to make some criticisms here, but don't
get me wrong, I think they've done an excellent job on TX3 and I
like it a lot, and indeed I rate it as one of my 3 fave PS games
(Wipeout XL and Robotron X being the other 2). I'm bound to be a
little hypercritical of some things, because this *is* more or
less my game with some embellishments and changes, and hey, you
gotta love your own :-). Your claw looks a bit nicer IMO than the
one in T2K, and moves nice and responsively just like it should.
The lasers are now more colourful polygon objects - the Particle
Laser in particular is a lot beefier-looking than in T2K. The
basic gameplay is exactly as in T2K - blast enemies coming up the
Web, collect powerups to get points, goodies, and access to one
of the three Bonus Rounds. The powerups come in the usual T2K
sequence, starting with the Particle Laser. There is one extra
powerup beyond the Warp Token - something called a Super AI
Droid. And speaking of the AI Droid, at this point I am going to
have my first moan. They've lobotomised the AI Droid! The poor
thing has no "I"! Instead of targeting enemies on the
Web, the poor enfeebled thing just follows you around and hovers
over your ship with no autonomy of its own! This ruins one of my
favourite strategies in T2K - when you got the Droid and knew how
it behaved, you could more or less leave it alone to handle one
part of the Web while you concentrated on defending another part.
It was a great comfort to know it was there looking after your
ass. Now, you have to lead it by the nose everywhere you go -
which makes it perfectly useless in one of the situations where
the old Droid used to be so useful - if you are trapped in a
corner with enemies at the top of the Web and you don't have Jump
Enabled yet. The old Droid would pick the enemies off the Web rim
for you and hopefully buy you the space and time to get ahold of
that Jump powerup. The new Droid just sits and wibbles over your
head, and the baddies march in and get you! I think he may get
some of his brain back if you get the Super AI Droid powerup, but
by then you're usually near the end of the wave anyway, and don't
really have time to feel the benefit before you're done on that
Web. As it is, I miss having a smart Droid terribly, and it's
taken the fun out of "Yes, Yes, Yes!" powerups. I'd
rather have my Particle Laser straight away than that useless
droid. I'm sorry, guys, but minus points for an AI droid that
isn't I. :-/ The usual crop of enemies are there and on the whole
behave as they should. The Demon Head has been replaced by a
similar enemy that fires a blue thing at you when shot - I
actually preferred the look of the Demon Head though, but that's
a minor quibble and largely a matter of personal taste. There's
another enemy that looks a bit like a delta-wing aircraft that
takes several shots to kill. Fuseballs are now rendered as
squiggly kinda white things - I would have liked to have seen
each arm of the squiggle be a different colour, like in the
original, but again, that's a matter of taste. However, and I'm
going to have another bit of a rant - They've emasculated
Pulsars! In T2K, when a Pulsar reaches the lip of the Web, it
splits in two and the pieces hurtle around the lip - a real
sphincter-tightening occurrence if you had Jump, and certain
death if you did not! The X3 Pulsars just behave like Flippers
when they reach the top (which is what happened in original
Tempest, but which is a bit boring). A Pulsar or Pulsar Tanker
nearing the top in T2K used to be a source of ABJECT TERROR for
the player, and dealing with them early was a major impetus to
the gameplay. Now, they are not to be feared at all, so long as
you don't get caught in the lane when they pulse. I *miss* that
terror, and I get a little nostalgic twinge whenever I see a
Pulsar getting near the top and I don't get scared at all. I
don't really hate Pulsars like I used to, and I think that's a
shame. Another difference in the gameplay is in the behaviour of
the Particle Laser and Spikes. In 2K, the Particle Laser makes
very short work indeed of Spikes, eroding them almost instantly.
In X3, it has no discernable increase in efficiency over the
standard laser when shooting Spikes. This means that Pulsars over
a spiked lane become a lot more dangerous. Now, I can see that
maybe they wanted to deliberately make Spikes more of a bother in
X3 - fair enough. But it's a big flaw that the same thing now
happens in 2000 Mode - the Particle Laser does not kill Spikes
like it should. I sincerely hope that they haven't made the same
mistake in the other versions of the game for the Saturn and
Windows, because those are being sold as straight T2K, and the
fact that the Particle Laser doesn't nail Spikes properly alters
the balance of the gameplay considerably. (This is the reason I
*wish* that they had shown me the conversions prior to release -
I could have trapped silly errors like this). The Bonus Rounds
are as in T2K, although I find them a bit more difficult (I think
the tail in the Particle Tube sequence disappears waaaay too fast
when you're off the track, and it also doesn't look quite right -
it should taper more). One oddity is that in Bonus Round One, the
Jupiter texmap sequence, the background starfield is for some
reason drawn on *top* of the texmap instead of behind it, which
looks a little strange. The feedback effects in Bonus Round Three
(and, indeed, throughout the game) are a lot faster and smoother
than on the Jag - but I found the rings a bit harder to see in
BR3 than they were on the Jag. Overall, though, despite these
cavils, the gameplay rocks along at a blinding pace just as it
ever did, and it's even more spectacular than before, and
benefits from having less slowdown when there are a lot of
enemies onscreen than the poor old Jaggi did. Anyone who is
familiar with T2K will settle right in and score a good half-mill
first time out. Those who missed out on the joys of Jaguar
ownership and missed T2K can now find out what all the fuss was
about and enjoy some nice extra eye- and ear-candy into the
bargain. As I said before, TX3 now ranks in my top 3 PS games
ever, and if you want one of the hottest, most intense blasting
games out there, nip out straight away and score a copy. As ever,
best played in a dark room with the stereo cranked whilst under
the influence of the stimulant of your choice. Other, minor
things that bugged me: - They took out my rotating yak-head and
replaced it with boring corporate logos! Boo! Hiss! hehe...
- They took out my yak-head Web! Waaaa!
- 2K mode should not have been hidden. And the code for accessing
it - I could have understood some bovine or ungulate reference,
but "yiff!"? That sounds like a dog with a cold doing a
wet sneeze! Wassap with that?? Only minor silly things really.
The only things that really annoy me are the new uselessness of
the AI Droid, the less-than-terrifying Pulsars and especially the
Particle Laser not shooting Spikes properly in 2K mode - that one
was a big "oops". As I hope you can tell, I actually
like the game a lot, and I hope I haven't appeared overcritical.
I do think that I have isolated some of the reasons why some Jag
T2K diehards have been a little critical though - it's not all
just sour grapes; there are some significant differences that
alter the balance of the gameplay in a way that may not be to
everybody's taste. I would say that that's fine, there's a 2K
mode for those that prefer it - but the particle laser/spike
anomaly shifts the balance of the gameplay in that mode too,
which is definitely not how it should be. Moans notwithstanding,
a fine variant on the Tempest/2K theme, that looks and sounds
wicked and which will have your thumb aching and your retinas
smoking :-)
(:-) - Y a K
