Review by Mandy Kinson


Name:         Bad Mojo
Publisher:    Pulse Entertainment
Format:       CD
Available:    Now   

Requires:

O/S:          Win 3.1/95
Processor:    486-DX66+
RAM:          8Mb+
Graphics:     SVGA
CD-Rom:       X2
Soundcard:    All major cards supported

Tested on:

Processor:    P90
O/S:          Windows 95
RAM:          16Mb
Graphics:     Stealth 64 2mb Vram
CD-ROM:       Panasonic double speed
Soundcard:    Soundblaster 16 Vibra
Controls:     Microsoft Mouse

Bad Mojo

The definitive Cockroach's eye view of the world!

You start the game in the distant future, a bleak and overcrowded world. You see a whimpy scientist in pesticide research, broke, without friends, and no family he wants to know. He lives in a sordid flat over a down-and-out bar owned by an old alco called Eddie. The scientist's lucky break comes, and he is offered a million dollars by a mysterious sponsor to try to find the final solution to the problem of cockroaches. While attempting to disappear with said funds, he manages to go and get himself turned into one of the little beasties instead! And that's where you come in!

You, the cockroach/scientist, wind up in the basement, in a gutter. The tables are turned, and you need to find a way out of this fine mess you've gotten yourself into!

That Gadget is determined to turn me into an insect of some sort. Is he trying to tell me something??

I have to admit, that the roach is sort of cute, and it is interesting to get a roach-eye perspective on life. I actually found myself feeling quite sorry for the little bugs after a while. Maybe I'll think twice before splatting one next time... then again, maybe not!

Bad Mojo comes with a massive manual, so I settled down for a long read (sad person that I am!) - to find that only a small section was in English - the rest was the same stuff in umpteen languages. You get the basic instructions, a background to the story, and a few hints to get you started. You don't need more than that really, the rest of the stuff is simple enough to see for yourself.

Mojo installed easily, requiring about 23mb of HD space free. The down side was that I had to set my screen to 256 colours, which makes my windows stuff look puky, and irritated me because I have to keep rebooting. On the up side, it came with a nice little game to play while the install was running - a ping-pong game, with the Earth as the ball. Very pretty, and far more amusing that sitting staring at the percentage bar going up. Ok, so small things please small minds, I liked it anyway :-)

Great Big Note - screen-savers also have to be disabled before playing. I forgot, and when my screen-saver cut in, it crashed the game, locked my PC up, and yes, you guessed it, I hadn't saved for ages!

The program did crash fairly frequently anyway, (usually when I'd not saved for a while!) but I don't know if that was due to my setup or not.

Mojo ran nice and smoothly on my machine (apart from the crashes), but there are plenty of options to prune down the 'frills' so the game will run at a reasonable speed on a lower spec machine. For example, you can turn off shadowing, the (very realistic!) antennae of the roach, the music etc.

I did have a little problem when I turned off the extra sounds. When I exited the options menu, my screen remained black, and it wasn't until I 'moused' over where the game options should have been that they showed up.

Loading up the game seemed fairly slow, which was a bit of a nuisance when you had to keep trying at something to get through (even if you do get 3 lives). I know its picky, but it would have been nice if you'd been returned to the game after saving, instead of having to take a menu option.

The controls are very straightforward - the arrow keys move your bug in the appropriate direction, and the Space bar or Enter key brings up the options screen. That's about it, easy! You can use alternative keys for movement - set in the options menu, so pick to suit what you like best. Movement will have to become intuitive, but even I got the hang of it eventually :-) The menus are mouse-controlled, which I thought was a bit of a pest, swapping from keyboard to mouse and back.

The game graphics are really well done, its very atmospheric, but not for the weak of stomach! Cockroaches live in the filth remember - yeeuch! Dead insects, dead rats, cigarette ends and trash litter the floor, which reminds me, I must clean under my cooker :-)! The 'scenery' is photographic quality, and I was very impressed with the care that had been taken to present the cockroach's eye view of the world. This view can take some getting used to when navigating around, especially as horizontal and vertical planes don't make any difference to a creepy-crawly.

The gameplay involves plenty of puzzle-solving, and some of the them seemed quite difficult, reminding me a bit of those little 'executive-toys', with lots of pieces to fit together. (Now why is it that highly paid executives can play with toys, but we can't play computer games at work??). Anyway, you have to complete several steps (which may seem unrelated) before things start to happen. Roaches may have limited influence in the world, but they can still manipulate a few things in the environment, so you can push certain objects, and your little body weight can alter the balance of things. Do explore everything, sometimes the most unexpected things can help you.

You do have to remember to move like a cockroach, run in short bursts, and there are lots of things six little legs can get stuck to, so tread carefully! And there may be big clumsy humans about, or SPIDERS and other things lurking around the corner ready to lunch upon a nice juicy insect!!

It would have been nice if the screens had scrolled with your movement, and you have to be particularly careful when crossing a boundary, that you don`t land in trouble! Don't panic too much though, you do get 3 'lives' before you die off completely. I thought this was I nice touch, as it meant that you didn't have to load the game too many times. I tended to use up my extra lives trying to find ways around a sticky situation, before doing it 'for real'.

If you keep your eye on what the other cockroaches are doing, they will often give you a clue by their actions - some may even 'talk' to you. You also have a 'guide' (the spirit of Eddie's dead wife) trying to help you back to humanity - and she gives several hefty clues, so take notice of what she says, it might appear to be gibberish at the time, but it'll make sense later! As you go through the game you will find that you have more than one goal, and you will find out some surprising things about that geeky academic that you were!

There are several video clips, again all done from a roach's-eye point of view, their quality is pretty good, not jerky and not too grainy. The sound is OK, but I had to turn off the background music after a short while as I found it too irritating when I stayed in a location for any length of time. I know it's meant to add to the atmosphere of the game, but you may be in a particular location for a fairly long time. I must admit that I liked the game better with just the sound-effects on, I'm sure cockroaches don`t scurry around to happy roaching music - or maybe they do!

All in all, I thought this was a good game, though rather revolting in places (or maybe I`m just squeamish)! It is very well presented, the graphics are quite impressive, and it`s very playable with a nice simple interface. It would have scored 8/10, had it not been for those irritating crashes!

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Rating: 7/10 (Good)
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