Destruction Carnival
Creator: Charles Tumino / Virtually Real
Destruction Carnival is a top-down shoot-em-up, and in it you play agent D.S. Troy who runs around picking up weapon powerups and shooting the baddies. The game reminds me of Crystal Quest for the Macintosh, but is a lot more dynamic (luckily). In each level, baddies come out of the baddie-emitters until there are a certain number on the screen, and you keep shooting them until you have killed enough to advance to the next wave. You must also avoid mines, and you can collect and use bombs, missiles and any of the large array of different weapons avaliable. The animation and explosions are very good, and were all done by the game's creator. The music chosen is always appropriate, and there are plenty of different sound effects in each level. You even get to watch all the intro scenes explaining the plot, and play bonus stages and fight bosses like Horace (above).
Destruction Carnival has attained legendary status over the years. Freeware sites voted it their top action game, and people use it as a reference by which to rate new titles.
The graphics look more impressive when they're moving, and you can see little details like heads and eyeballs flying off, things flashing and glass breaking. One unfortunate aspect of the game is that the above screenshot is actual size, i.e. the people are all less than a centimetre high. Perhaps this was necessary to allow slower computers to cope with the number of objects on screen at a time, but it means you have to sit pretty close to your monitor.
Other strange choices on the part of the creator include the fact that he chose not to let Klik and Play do more than one sound effect at once, and that he did not include a password system. Having no passwords is a bit annoying, especially when you consider that Destruction Carnival is real hard and you'll have to replay many long levels to reach the part where you last died.
Still, it's always rewarding to get up to the next kind of alien or meet the next boss and hear his silly recorded speech. This is a classic game with some clever programming, and if you haven't played it then you need to give it a try.
Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 9/10
Presentation: 8/10
Playability: 9/10
My rating: 8.5/10
Wanna know how popular this game is? Look at some of the big name download sites I can find it on without even looking hard.
gamesacademy.com
ZDNet.com
CNET.com
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