Review by Dale Wilks

Name:         Krush Kill 'N Destroy
Publisher:    Electonic Arts
Format:       CD
Available:    28th Feb!

Requires:

O/S:          DOS 5.0+ or Windows 95
Processor:    P75+
RAM:          16Mb+
Graphics:     SVGA
CD-Rom:       X2
Soundcard:    All major cards supported

Tested on:

O/S:          Windows 95
Processor:    120Mhz Pentium
RAM:          32Mb
Graphics:     2Mb SVGA (Matrox Millenium)
CD-ROM:       x4
Soundcard:    AWE32 & Yamaha DB50XG
Controls:     Mouse, Keyboard

Krush Kill 'N Destroy

'This is brilliant. There's these two warring sides, see, and you choose to control one of them as you embark on a series of missions interspersed with video.'

'Err, but'

'Krush Kill 'n Destroy indeed. You can build, umm`buildings, and have to manage your resources whilst producing troops and tanks and stuff, and stamping out the enemy.'

'No, no, stop! That's Command and Conquer!'

'Ah, but this is set in Australia.'

'Oh, well that's alright then.'

KKND is the latest game that attempts to bridge the gap between strategy/wargames and arcade bloodfests, hoping to attract punters from both camps, as well as those that are particular fans of one genre and fancy dabbling in t'other. It's produced by an Australian company called Melbourne House - those that have been around for a few years will remember MH as the programmers of the spectrum game Way Of The Exploding Fist - a game which single-handedly spurned a string of one-on-one beat 'em ups. KKND bears more than a passing nod to Command & Conquer, a game that did quite well for itself, if I remember correctly. Nothing wrong with that - they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but does KKND build and expand on C&C or is it just a cheap facsimile?

KKND is set in a post-apocalyptic future. Yes folks, it's global thermo-nuclear war again. Fortunately the manual doesn't dwell on this for long, the point being that two factions rose from the mass destruction. The Survivors dived underground at the first sign of a war, and after 60 years, this military community was driven to the surface by their need for vital resources. Some never made it below ground however, and after being subjected to near-lethal doses of radiation, mutated into The Evolved, a god-fearing race who fight with tamed mutant creatures and anything else they can salvage from the war-torn surface. The Survivors believe that the earth belongs to them, the true humans, whereas The Evolved believe that allowing the earth to return to former methods of leadership will bring a less forgiving god upon them, and so they are fighting for the sake of the planet.

The game comes on one CD, unlike C&C's two, and can be installed from Windows 95 or DOS. What is immediately noticeable, is that you can choose a high resolution screenmode from either - the latest in the C&C series, Red Alert, only allows you to play in hi-res if you're running the game from Windows 95. One to KKND. Before you begin a game proper you need to choose which side you will fight for, and then you see the briefing for the first mission. The briefings take the form of 3 windows, which together form a sort of console; the top-left window shows the video, the top-right window shows a scrolling text display (That's actually quite funny), and the bottom one shows a map, or some other graphical representation of you mission objective. The video is OK - it won't win any Oscars though, and all the actors have that Australian twang (which you won't notice after a while).

Into the game proper then, and the main playing area takes up most of the display, with an unobtrusive line of icons placed at the far right. The icons are where you click when you want to change game options, build new units or whatever. They're a bit on the titchy side though - maybe the size of the icons was sacrificed in order to make the play area as large as possible? (And the top icon shows you how many resources you have left, clicking it a second time turns it off. One has to question the point of this - why not just leave the resources displayed on the screen somewhere?) The battlefield really looks the part, with burnt out cars, emaciated trees and the remains of small villages. Your soldiers, vehicles and buildings look great, with some nice animation, but what I noticed is that things look a little larger than C&C, so your soldiers look like soldiers instead of little groups of pixels. The key to KKND is oil (rather than C&C's Tiberium) - when you find a bubbling pool of liquid gold, you must order a mobile oil rig to move to the site and drain the oil seam, whilst an oil tanker carts the oil back to your power station and it is converted into resources (that's money to you and me). Shades of Warcraft 2, here. You can then use these resources to buy more advanced buildings, armies of grenade-throwing soldiers, and vehicles that bristle with guns. Then, you stamp out the enemy! Simple, eh? All the action is complimented by a huge range of sounds; the 'ker-chunk' of shotguns, the growl of mutant beasties, large explosions, the shouts of approval from your soldiers and the voice saying 'Building completed'. Lovely.

Onto the differences between this and C&C then. As I've pointed out, the cosmetic ones are the more noticeable, but there are a few gameplay changes too. In C&C, you select a structure to build, and your money is reduced before the building is placed (after a while). In KKND, you place the structure immediately, and it is then slowly built, with your resources diminishing as it does so. Kind of makes more sense really. What I did like, is that you can opt to build several types of unit at the same time (in C&C you can only train, for example, one kind of soldier at a time), and by clicking several times on a 'produce unit' icon, you can build one after another, up to 9. The other thing I noticed is that the opposing sides AI seems better than C&C. Enemy units don't wander aimlessly about and attack you when they get near - if you send a scout out, the enemy will kill him and follow his tracks back to your base, usually with a few more following. The other thing is this; have you noticed how flippin' difficult C&C can be when you want to direct your troops from A to B, or even worse have you tried running enemy soldiers over? Your units seem to take on a mind of their own, don't they? You'll be pleased to hear that KKND units go where you tell 'em to, no faffing about.

The question you're probably wanting the answer to though, will be 'Is it better than Command & Conquer or Warcraft 2?' Better, no. Different, yes. It's as good as these two, although the concept isn't as fresh and exciting as when the aforementioned games appeared. If you like these, you'll like KKND, and if you're thirsting for a new challenge then it comes highly recommended.

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Rating: 8/10 (Recommended!)
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