Knight Force

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Red Sabbath, an evil sorcerer, has descended from the mountains in an attempt to terrorize the peaceful land of Bellioth. This land is the crossroad between five time zones and if Red Sabbath gains control of the land, he will control Time. When the king died, the Knight of Thunder became the master and keeper of Bellioth and his loving princess Tanya is now kiddnapped by the evil sorcerer. Red Sabbath has created clones and placed them in the time zones. You must travel through the different time zones (5 in total), armed with your precious sword, while collecting magic amulets of power. Each amulet can only be used within a predetermined time zone. The knight will face various types of enemy during his quest, such as skeletons, armed dwarfs, deadly birds and the evil clone of the sorcerer. Each time you kill a clone of the evil sorcerer, princess Tanya is placed in a different time zone. The time zones can be i.e. Versailles in 1789 with its murderous streets and sewers to New York docklands with an octopus as a gang leader! There is also a futuristic zone swarmed by tech-junk! Although the task behind the game is quite interesting, the gameplay is repetitive and involves some basic movements like jumping over deadly gaps and collapsing floors, hitting enemies with the sword (it requires a lot of hits to take down one) and objects collecting. The controls are very frustrating since there is no 100% accuracy in every move you make and the enemies just won't let you breath at all!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The game is visually and sonically pleasing in contrast to the overall gameplay. The Atari ST hardware here does a pretty good job, although there are not any special techniques like parallax-scrolling. The different time zones are well designed, offering some nicely detailed and colorful screens and the overall artistic touch is great. The animation of the main character is also good although there is a lack of originality on the enemy sprites. The game's sound is basic, with some interesting (and weird at times) sampled soundd effects but no in-game music at all.