10/17/20 Wrath of the Demon (1991)

Wrath of the Demon (1991) by Abstrax and published by ReadySoft Incorporated for Atari ST, DOS, Amiga, and Commodore 64. Oh boy, the first Atari ST game I’ve covered! Too bad it’s not that great. Now, to be clear, this game excels in its presentation. I’m a sucker for parallax scrolling, so once the first gameplay section opens on horseback with the countryside, rendered in rich 512-color graphics, rolling behind our Fabio-esque hero, set to some stellar midi music, I was all set to have a good time. Then I had to play the game, and it’s uncomfortable, to say the least. You have a good number of hit points, but this section moves way too fast, enemies fly at you quickly and all you have is a stubby punch with strict timing. There are potions you need to pick up on the ground, but also hazards. Every hazard does the same thing, but there’s something like five or six different graphics for them so discerning what’s a potion (or sack of gold) and what’s a weird-looking obstacle becomes an exercise in twitch reaction as the graphics speed into a mushy blur. The next section is a face off against two goblins, one with a sword and another who chucks things at you. You can only go so far forward and need to kill the sword-wielder first, but good luck, because he’s got a raid-boss amount of health and can only be hit crouching… while the other one throws things that hit low… when it takes a good second and a half to go from crouching to jumping. The whole game feels like this, like walking on eggshells, and I wouldn’t say to try it anytime soon.