Recovery

The Atari ST cannot scroll

Well, don't be so quick because here is Recovery, a shoot 'em up by New Deal Productions. Oddly, it's something I've not heard of until the other day! It takes us on a *Fantastic Voyage* through the lower bits of some poor soul in need of medical assistance. I assume we're trying to help him recover from something nasty as we begin at the bottom and work our way up through the liver (I think), and then onto the heart before finally smashing through the old grey matter.

Recovery is much in the vein of something like Menace or R-Type but runs at a far quicker pace with many of the patient's body parts whizzing around the screen. It's like Anarchy and just as tough - almost nigh on impossible when trying to dodge everything. But our ship is spritely and we're armed with a laser so shoot first and never ask dumb questions.

I love finding something 'new' to play and this is an exciting shoot'em up...

It's a shooter. So, shoot everything!

Each part of the body is a separate stage and also incredibly long, almost to the point where you think it will never end! However, they all feel much the same with a vast array of different "aliens" to avoid or kill. These use a variety of attack patterns but touching any reduces energy levels, so bad pilots ultimately end up losing yet another life. Strangely, there is no end-of-level boss. A beastly tumour would have been nice to destroy - a sentence I thought I would never say!

The joystick controls are excellent - very fast and responsive without any sluggishness. Our main weapon is a laser beam and quite effective too - pressing and holding fire shoots this laser and kills anything in front of you. Sadly, there are no other types of upgrades or special weapons so all we have is one laser and nothing more.

Thankfully, our sleeping patient appears to have popped many pills, which you'll see floating through his body just waiting to be collected. These can boost your weapon's rate of fire, energy and shields which are all displayed in the status bar. I never figured out what "LIGH" is for - I hit every key but nothing, nada, zip. Does anyone know?

Okay, let's take a break from reading and view another lovely screenshot...

Aesthetics?

Visually, this is a mixed-body bag that isn't quite as healthy as you would hope. Don't get me wrong, a scroller needs to scroll and each parallax layer moves very smoothly. However, the backgrounds can be quite bare-bones, but there are tons of funky sprites which only goes to prove how weirdly wonderful we are on the inside. Maybe!

Hitting F4 flips between 50/60Hz which speeds things up even more - if you can handle it?

Sonically, this is going to appeal to lovers of chip music. To be blunt, it's quite simply fantastic and foot-tappingly awesome so makes you realise just how cool your ST is. However, those insane people amongst us might wish to turn it off and hear sound effects. No problem, just hit F2/F3 but why would you ever wanna do that? I know, because you're stupid.

Okay, you've guessed it - stop reading and enjoy another gorgeous screenshot...

The CryptO'pinion?

Recovery is a damn good shoot 'em up and also technically impressive. It slaps the faces of all those lazy programmers that said the ST cannot scroll. However, gameplay could be better as each stage feels overly long with zillions of frantic 'aliens' constantly buzzing about. This static style doesn't seem to go anywhere, so it gets samey after a while. Also, our weapons cannot be upgraded which is a massive disappointment but not as much as having no bosses to fight.

Okay, I'm sure you can tell that this isn't the greatest shoot 'em up but it's far from being the worst. I've enjoyed blasting through some fella's intimate body parts all in the name of science fiction. Recovery is definitely worth booting up for a quick game or two. If only to see who can survive the longest, good luck with that because you'll need it.

Check out these screenshots before deciding whether to download for hard disk or floppy...