Ramparts Review

Posted: 2003-05-27 00:00:00

Orginally published at WWW.PDACorps.COM

Ramparts review
by: Ben - 25th May 2003
Link: Clickgamer
Download trial / purchase

I think the first computer game I ever bought was 'Hunchback' for my Commodore VIC20 (hehe). It was released by one of the biggest games publishers of the time 'Ocean'. Things have moved on a lot, and Ocean are now apparently owned by Infogrames, and Hunchback has been lost forever. In the game you took control of 'Hunchback' and had to avoid various obstacles and rescue the young Esmerelda from the tower of a well guarded fortress. I won't mention Hunchback again, as it has nothing to do (officially) with Ramparts for the PocketPC, other than it reminds me very much of it. If you remember Hunchback, you'll know what I mean :)

Installation of Ramparts was a simple affair, and the software was happy to be installed to a memory card. The full install occupies nearly 2.5Mb of space. The game doesn't take long to launch, whereupon you are taken straight to the title/options screen. The title screen is colourful and depicts the hero knight whose job it is to rescue the damsel in distress. There are two menus visible at the bottom of the screen. The tools menu accesses the 'About' screen and the instructions. The instructions must rate as the shortest I have ever seen! To reproduce them in full...'Race across the hazard filled ramparts dodging arrows & dangers in your quest to save the fair damsel in distress!' Fortunately, no further instructions are needed. This is a good old fashioned platform game, with controls no more complex than left, right and jump to worry about.

The structure of the game is simple. You begin a level on the left hand side of the 'map', and have to reach the right hand side negotiating dangers on the way within the defined time limit. Once you reach the right hand side of the map, you move on to the next map. There are over 50 maps in all. Once all the maps are completed and the damsel is saved, the game is complete. If you fall foul of any of the hazards along the way, a life is lost and you return to the start of the map. The maps are generally a few screens wide, and scroll from right to left as you progress through them.

There are certain elements that are essential in a platform game in my opinion. The first is that you must be able to accurately predict how the game is going to behave. In other words, you need to be confident in the collision detection, and confident of the way your character can behave within the game environment. There's nothing worse than a platform game where you lose a life for 'nearly missing' an adversary, as the collision detection interprets a carefully timed miss, as actually a 'hit'.? Fortunately, the detection system employed by Ramparts seems to be accurate, and I've not once been caught shouting 'but I missed it!'. The way your character reacts with the environment has also been written well, and once you know how near the edge of a platform your knight can stand, you have confidence in knowing just how far you can push it before he falls off. It's consistent and it's predictable which is a good thing. All too often with platform games, half the challenge is trying to make accommodations for a poorly executed game engine. Fortunately, Ramparts does not suffer from these problems.

Graphically, Ramparts does the job. The game probably won't win any awards for its graphics, but they're certainly clear and functional. Scrolling is smooth and character animation is simple but again, does the job. Textures are repeated quite a lot to create some of the backdrops, but this isn't really a big deal. There is enough variation in the way of forests, castles, lava pools, rope swings, etc to keep the variation up.

The sound effects are limited to some noises when your knight collects diamonds or when you lose a life. The soundtrack on the other hand plays throughout. Whilst it isn't particularly medieval sounding (it's a fast paced dance track), it does keep the tempo of the game up and help communicate the urgency to complete the levels within the time limits.

Overall, Ramparts is a title that represents a bold step in to the platform genre which the PPC is somewhat lacking in. Like most platform games you probably won't be playing it again and again once you've completed it, but until you do, there is a fair amount of enjoyment to be had along the way.