by Steve Marsden, Steve Cooke
Preliminary observations.
The C+VG reviewer at the time complained that City Slicker was in poor taste, because real terrorist attacks occurred in London with lethal consequences, so the premise - bombs ready to blow up Westminster - should have been avoided - only, I suppose he was referring to some IRA deeds, while here we're talking about Abru Cadabbra being the baddie, somewhere defined as Arabus Terroristicus, so what better time to review it again than now. It's a mix between Dynamite Dan and the 2D arcade/adventure tradition that was born with PIjamarama.
The mags.
I thought it wasn't well received, because the WoS voting average is 5.3, but it really got good reviews from Your Sinclair [8/10], Sinclair User [4/5] and even from C+VG, in spite of the above-mentioned criticism, while Crash people were a bit annoyed by it, and defined it dated, another after-the-time-limit Jet Set Willy derived game, programmed by authors who already abundantly exploited that lode [Technician Ted, Costa Capers] - although they couldn't deny it had its merits and allowed it an overall of 65%.
Personal reminiscing.
Personally I prefer it over their previous efforts. I was attracted by it since I saw those big noses challeging each other on the cover of the 10 Great Games 3 compilation, wondering what could it be all about. When I finally put my hands over it [over an italian pirated version], or, better, over the keys while loaded on my Spectrum, I found it strangely fascinating. The big noses were preserved in the cartoonish and ridiculous sprites and I even managed to cling onto a platform with mine, there were plenty of wonderfully crapping pigeons and the guards had something diabolical in their going up and down, left and right firmly holding their spears or whatever they are, and resembled little devils with a fork, in my view. It was terribly difficult to wander around without being thrown back or killed, and because, as your energy was drained out, you couldn't jump as high as at the start, and so you couldn't reach most of the platforms anymore. What was hiding inside this mysterious game?
The game.
Well, unluckily now I've pratically vivisected it, and the poetry is all gone, but what remains is nonetheless a pretty decent game. It's even got its personality, it's surely not a simple clone of an abused formula: besides the guards and the objects with repetitive movement patterns, there's Abru Cadabbra, whose touch is lethal, who can follow you everywhere, even when you take the tube to some other part of London, because, yes, you can [and have to] even take the tube and wait to arrive to the desired destination, as Westminster, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, or suburbia. And if he touches you the game is over, so you'd better run. Then there's the ugly Ed Butt, which moves with a certain randomness, he's innocuous, he's just a bit of a kleptomaniac and tends to pick up the objects he finds scattered around, including the useful ones, so you must anticipate him, or PICK HIM up [after all, with such a name, and face, he should be accustomed to being picked on], then let him fall from a certain height, and he should drop the items he's carrying [or so they say: I never succeeded in obtaining any]. And this game has even an AIM, as incredible as it sounds! But it seems I was forgetting about it: as previously stated, there are bombs at Westminster placed by your old friend Abru, and you must build a Bomb Defusing Unit [B.D.U.], and that's the reason for your running around and collecting items and find their use, to obtain the parts of the B.D.U., assemble them in your house, and then bring your creation to Westminster. Since my childhood, or teenage years, I improved the mobility of the main character finding out, thanks to a hint sheet called instructions, that you have prep pills with you and you can use them [pause the game with "A", then press the pick up key and ENTER simultaneously] to replenish your energy and jumping high again. Moreover, there are food and drinks often appearing who can serve the same end.
You can carry six items at once, and choose one by pausing and using left/right. I was not doing much, in spite of having fun cheating, so I finally watched the RZX solution, and I would have never been able to solve the game playing it for all my life, it's not overcomplicated, it's beyond overcomplicated, too many items, too many things to try before discovering their use, too hard doing all this while jumping this and that and avoiding Abru, and how could I know that you can extinguish the candles and obtaining doors and guard freezings and such. And if you give seeds to a specific pigeon, there, you obtain a LADDER, of course! With so many pigeons how much time would have taken me to discover what packet of seeds goes to what pigeon? Or maybe whatever seed packet works, which would make sense. Whatever. Probably nobody ever solved the game without looking at the code, as the RZX guys in fact did. And so I only got to see the nice use of certain objects, and how they move by themselves when you drop them, and how the assembling animation is nice, and how the B.D.U. is a cute little thing with wheel, and how the defusing animation looks good, through the RZX video.
In short, the game is ok, but too hard.
3,75/10
p.s. the sound effects are nice too.
