Annex

Yet another FPS game!

Annex is a homebrew first-person shooter published by LAPD in 1995 and attempts to blend together the action of Doom using the gameplay mechanics of Dungeon Master. Nasty aliens have taken control of the science space station, Annex. Guess what? It's our job to kill every last one of them whilst fixing the life support reactors. Oh yeah!

At first, I didn't think this would work using the old 90° turns but it works out very nicely. Movement is performed using a combination of the keyboard and mouse: the keyboard walks and activates switches with the used mouse to aim and shoot. As you can imagine, this works well and whenever a bad guy sees you - they actually speak. This conveniently acts as a nifty "heads-up" alert so you're not taken by surprise. So, annihilate them for a gory blood splatter :-)

The graphics are great but lack variety for both colour and texture, thus things tend to get a little samey after a while. Sadly, there is also no map function to help us out - the docs do suggest making your own. A very good idea.

Annex is great. I like the way it combines action with adventure but you really need a pen and paper to map it (otherwise, it's easy to get lost!!). Far from perfect but fans of the first-person shooter genre should definitely take a look.

 * AtariMania has a download available from their Atari ST database.

 * Zogging Hell has a nice selection of the LAPD library.