Annex

DM meets Doom!

Annex is a first-person shooter published by LAPD in 1995, and attempts to blend together the action of Doom with a little Dungeon Master thrown in. 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.

At first, I didn't think this would work using 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.

The graphics are great, but lack variety in both colour and texture, so things tend to look samey after a while. Sadly, there is also no map function to help - the docs suggest making your own. A very good idea.

I like the way it combines action with adventure, but you need a pen and paper to map as you explore. Far from perfect, but fans of the first-person shooter genre should definitely take a look at this. Annex is fantastic!

• AtariMania has a download available from their Atari ST database.
• Zogging Hell has a nice selection of the LAPD library.