Cute Platform (New Zealand Story)

Member Name: scuzz

Product:	New Zealand Story
Date:	16/11/04 (155 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: simple to play

Disadvantages: frustrating

====The Story====

Your enjoying a day out with your kiwi friends, when a seal comes along and kidnaps all of you. You being intelligent, jump out of the sack and hide. Then it's off to save your friends.

====What Kind of Game?====

This is a simple one player platform game, ideal for younger game players. You play a kiwi and come across numerous baddies.

It consists of worlds, which are devided up into levels. At the end of each level is a kiwi, locked in a cage - just touch the cage to free them. And at the end of each world is an big baddie.

====Control====

The joystick is used for this game, with the controls very simple. Up for jump, left, right and FIRE button to fire a weapon.

When flying just use directions for the way you want to go.

====Graphics====

These are ok, considering the time the game was made. There is a lot of detail throughout the game, from the backgrounds to the animated opening sequence. The flow of the characters is very smooth with no jerking.

The colours are bright, making the game appealling to youngsters.

====Sound====

Very annoying music I'm afraid. Thankfully, there is a toggle for that! The sound effects are subtle but good, such as bombs exploding.

As with a lot of games, the music indicates how long on each level you have left. The music pulses and then speeds up when an invinsible baddie is about to appear, meaning you should get your bum in gear and get to the end of the level.

====Baddies====

These were rather odd. Here are just a few...

Brown Snails
They look harmless, but when they crouch down, watch out because they're about to send a mine in your direction!

Green Snails
These look like they belong in the army and they fire what can only be described as an electronic beam.

Bats
These drop triangles on you

Flying Ducks
These are riden by bomb throwing women of some kind. If killed correctly, you can ride the level.

Foxes
These jump about reproducingso kill them quick.

Flying Foxes
They either ride balloons or stone looking things. Again killed right and you can steel their flying machine.

Arrow Men
These fly and throw arrows upwards. Again you can pinch their flying machines.

Lazer Men
These are the arrow men who fly in a high tech machine that fires a lazer. Nick this and you've got a lazer to playwith too!

Sea Urchins
Be careful when you're swimming as they'll try and gobble you up as you swim past.

====Weapons====

You automatically have arrows to fire at enemies, but other weapons are available throughout the game.

Bombs
Good for those chaps that throw arrows upwards

Lazers
Goodbye everything in its path!

Water
Sounds odd but true. When you're swimming, you can only be under water for so long, otherwise you drown. To enable you to go on for longer, go to the surface, and hit fire. This will produce a stream of water, that if it hits something will kill it.

====Lives====

They're pretty stingey here. You start the game with three lives and to get more, you must collect the letters dotted around to spell the word extra. The letters are very few and far between, so achieving this was very hard.

====Game Play====

Whilst this game is good, there is no save game option. This often makes it frustrating when you get so far in and have to start from the beginning.

I tried endlessly to complete this, but never got very far. After reaching the second world, I often died, leaving me unwilling to start all over again.

Whilst there are many cheats out there for this game, I don't like the idea of endless lives as a certain element of fun is taken away in my view.

I won't put the cheat on here as it's very rude and not suitable for children's eyes.

====Over All====

I do like this game, but did feel it was the same thing over and over. With the inability to get very far, I found it very frustrating, and often got annoyed, yet still I tried again.

It is addicitive and would be enjoyed by anyone who likes the simple platform game of days gone by.

But still I feel there are better platforms than this one.

Thanks for reading

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