IO

Programmed by Doug Hare
Software house Firebird (Zeppelin on re-release)

Reviewed by Jason Kelk (TMR)

The plot is very simple, mankind is in the middle of a big exodus in loads of spaceships when something nasty gets in the way. Your job is to jump into a small fighter and splatter whatever you come across with your laser guns. Blam, blam, blam!!

My first impression of IO was mostly based on the graphics (it was at a show) which are still incredible considering the limitations of the C64. Being a fan of arcade machines like Nemesis meant that I had certain expectations and IO looked like it could exceed all of them. The reviews said what I had hoped and made mention of a high difficulty level. Fine by me.

When the game was released I wandered down to my local software store and, after trading "friendly" insults with a member of staff, handed over some dosh and wandered back home again. After a weak loading picture (to this day I can't see why it was used) IO really sets out to impress, with it's four huge and totally different levels, a plethora of sprites with some really superb animation and the ingenious and slightly twisted end of level guardians it's a package that draws the eye and nearly wrenches it from the socket. The screenshots in Zzap! and the other mags truly did it justice. Then I started playing and toasted all my ships in the space of a couple of screens. "Bit 'ard innit?" I said, in the incredibly poor pseudo-sarf-London accent I seemed to have at that time. But it looked too good to just let things drop and I sat down to hammer it.

The difficulty seems to be geared very high but slowly, over a few weeks, I learnt how the attack waves moved, where was safe and where wasn't (more by trial and error), how to bunch the support drones up to intensify the firepower a little, how close the ship could get to the background and loads of other little tricks and tactics. And there was this feeling of getting somewhere since every game took me a little further into the levels and a little closer towards the end until one day I survived level 4.

The first glimpse of the final guardian (I didn't have much time to look, I was too busy blasting) was impressive and, when I got toasted again, I spent a few hours trying to get there with all weapons to take it on again. It didn't happen that day, it took a weekends worth of playing time Then I toasted the little bugger, watched the foetus go boom and there was much joy and dancing around the room to the Dave Whittaker music in an embarrassing fashion that day, I can tell you... And that's where the story ends, right? Actually it doesn't because I kept playing it. I'd finished the game but I wanted to really master it, learn everything about it and how to totally flatten it. This is when you start learning "special" tactics, noting how the score reacts to certain impacts and which are more worthy of your attention. And you start figuring out the fastest methods to wiping out attack waves, when it's safe to move ahead and just how close you can scrape past the landscape to take out ground bases. And you start trying to play without using the smart bombs so that you can collect spare support drones for points. After a few weeks or months of that the whole thing becomes second nature, you can predict exactly when aliens are due to arrive (not always where though, some of the waves are random) and instinctively know where the ship needs to be at any one time, either for safety or to do damage.

A game of IO now is like an old, comfortable jumper, something you put on to relax. Okay, I'm starting to sound old here... IO manages to produce a constant sense of achievement, even if you finish it there are ways to improve on your game, to push your score up or just to look cool when playing for an audience (like blowing up the foetus and dodging into the gap it leaves). Add to that some stunning graphics and some good sound effects and wedge it all into one load and you have a really nice piece of work. It's not for everyone, the difficulty level sees off a lot of players, but if you like a blast it's one to be looking at.