Review of Pyrotechnica by: Dave Stanworth

Control: keyboard or joystick
Sound: All popular cards supported but works best with Gravis/AWE32
Reviewed version on: 486DX66, 8mb, Sound Blaster Pro
Reviewer recommends: 486DX33 or higher.

The Game

The year is 2112. Inter planetary research shows information capsules buried deep within the hearts of ancient stars. Knowledge that long dead civilisations left behind light years ago. And data retrieval is big business.
The Terran Hardlight Corporation pay runners billions of Creds to excavate star cores. There is just one problem. Adherents. Hostile alien cyborgs that were programmed to defend this knowledge. At all costs. Without mercy...

And so goes the introduction to this new 3D action game from Psygnosis.

Basically, the game comprises of you flying a ship through various 3D rooms and tunnels, shooting anything that moves (and occasionally things that don't!). Loads of enemies and plenty of weapons. Sounds a bit familiar!? Well, if you've read the reviews of Descent, or played the game, then you'll realise that this games follows the same theme. I'm not going to start comparing the two, but I will say that if you enjoyed Descent you'll enjoy Pyrotechnica.

Installation

Couldn't be easier!

If you have a Gravis or AWE32 sound card then you can run Pyro. directly from the CD. The only problem with this is it's inability to store any configuration details, or the high score. It's a pity they didn't cater for people who want to run the game off the CD but store the config files on the HDD!

If you decide to install it to HDD then you'll need about 25Mb of free space. Once installed the game directory uses about 14Mb and with a little manual editting you can cut this down significantly.

Installation takes about 3 minutes!

The Aim

The idea of the game is to navigate your ship around a 3D map, completing various tasks before leaving via the exit. It sounds a lot easier than it actually is!

There are a number of key areas on each level which are shown on an introductory map. This map can be called up at any time during the game, so there is no need to try and memorise it!

The main areas include:

Exit
This is the way out. It is protected by a force field that is powered by the Power Generators. The force field will destroy your ship on contact.

Power Generator
You must destroy these before you can exit the level. They are always heavily defended.

Green Portal
This is one of the four 'power ups' available in the game. Portal power ups last about 60 seconds. The green portal increases shield strength by five times and your craft is given an emergency re-fit.

Blue Portal
All scores are multiplied by five for the duration of the power up.

Red Portal
Gives you five times the normal weapons fire and recharge rate for the duration of the power up.

Wingmen
These are captured pilots that can be freed by shooting the appropriate generator. They have their own crafts and once freed will fly in front of you killing the enemy. Beware though, your weapons can destroy them!

So basically, enter the maze, rescue the wingmen, destroy the power generator, and leave via the exit!

There is also a bonus section between levels, but apart from the excellent music, it's bloody dull! Just shoot the pretty coloured balloons!

Graphics

There are two main views when playing this game, one from inside the ship and one from above and behind. Although it looks prettier from outside, it is almost impossible to control. The internal view is much more practical and most people will probably stick with this.

The tunnels and rooms are more than adequate and really help to give the feeling of flying through a space station!

The various enemy ships and installations are very nicely done using something called 3D Gouraud shaded graphics! Whatever this is it certainly looks great!

It is possible to change the quality of the graphics, but on my DX66 running under Win'95, I was able to play with full quality at a perfectly acceptable speed.

Music and FX

Absolutely wild!!

I haven't heard music this good within a game for a long time! I always switch the background music off after 5 minutes and quite frequently switch off the sound FX as well. With this game I just turned up the volume and became engrossed! I won't say it will be to everyones taste (thrashing techno and electro), but you won't be able to complain about the quality. It's brilliant.

Game Play

As with many games there are lots of keys to remember, and this can be very confusing at first. I seemed to spend most of my time pressing the pause button, looking for the appropriate key, and then continuing. There are 35 keys used of which about 12 are important but difficult to remember. Still, after a few games they all start to become second nature, and I'm sure that by the time I finish the game I'll know them all off by heart!

It is possible to change the speed of your craft by pressing the 0-9 keys. Unfortunately, I always found myself going too slow down corridors and too fast in rooms, which is the opposite of what is required. I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually, but for now...

It is very easy to get disorientated, and having to call up the map every 15 seconds can be frustrating. Having said that, I think that is part of the charm of these type of games. If it was easy to get from point A to point B then there would be little challenge! I just think it could have been made easier!

Problems and Gripes!

I didn't encounter a single error while play the game, both under Win'95 and in native DOS. However, I do have a couple of moans:

1) It doesn't state anywhere that a co-processor is required to run the game. It does say that the minimum requirements are a 486DX, but so do a number of other games. It took us a while to figure out why the game wouldn't run on a 386DX25 or a 486SX33, even though Doom and DoomII run fine on both machines! This is not a major criticism but I do think Psygnosis should have made it more clear!

2) This is a common criticsm of mine but:
Why couldn't Psgnosis make the game playable directly from the CD?! There should be two install options - minimal and full, with the minimal just installing any configuration files and savegames. Too many companies presume we have 1G drives with loads of space, but unfortunately this isn't true!

Conclusion

If Descent had not been released then I think this would have been raved about for months. However, Descent beat it to release and has become the standard that games like Pyrotechnica will always have to meet. Unfortunately, Pyro. doesn't quite reach the necessary standard. Don't misunderstand me, Pyro. is a great game and if you've already beaten Descent then maybe you should give this a try. But if you only intend to buy one game in this genre then look first to Descent and wait for Pyro. to be released on budget labels!