Review by The Marauder

Name:         T-Mek
Publisher:    Midway
Format:       PC CD-ROM
Available:    Now

Requires:

O/S:          DOS 5.0 or better / Win 95
Processor:    486/100
RAM:          8Mb
Graphics:     SVGA Card (1Mb)
CD-ROM:       2x
Soundcard:    None required - Supports many

Tested on:

O/S:          Win 95 and DOS 6.22
Processor:    Cyrix P166+ / Intel P133
RAM:          64Mb / 32Mb
Graphics:     Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM 2Mb / Cirrus Logic CL5446 2Mb
CD-ROM:       16x / 12x
Soundcard:    SB AWE 32 w/8Mb / SB16
Controls:     CH Flightstick Pro, MS Mouse / Std Joystick

T-Mek

To those of us old enough to remember the times when these names first emerged into the video gaming and pinball worlds, the world was a much simpler place. While progress has never ceased its great march, I have always had the impression that many of the early leading lights of the games industry have somehow lost their way. These companies who strode like giants through my childhood years seem to have floundered around displaying a marked lack of direction.

Imagine then my delight when I was asked to look at a product from three of those early players: Williams, Midway and Atari. Sadly, this joy was short lived.

Ported from an arcade game, T-Mek is doubtless a fairly accurate copy of the original. In this lies its downfall. Coin-ops (and many console games) offer a challenge and appeal that differ enormously from those qualities sought after by most PC games players. The real trouble seems to be that the program is too close to the arcade original.

In brief, T-Mek is a hover-tank shoot-em-up with 24 levels. There are several types of scenario objective but by and large they all boil down one of two alternatives:

1) Kill everyone else without getting killed yourself.

or

2) Kill everyone else more often than they kill you.

High strategy, it ain't. More about this later...

Installation Blues

If you're looking for a real challenge with seemingly endless and infinitely varied problems and, perhaps, even a glimpse of puzzle solving Nirvana then T-Mek has the installation routine for you. Having persevered beyond my usual limited patience, I finally got the game installed. In fairness, the install problems did not occur on my "clean machine" which runs only DOS, Win95, Support Pack 1 and DirectX3. These days, though, not many people have such a setup available.

Having (finally) got the game installed, I tried to run it. The game ran moderately well on both machines under Win95, but response was markedly improved when the same machines were booted into native DOS instead. At no point in the testing did the game crash. This happens so rarely to me that I thought it worth remarking on.

Gameplay

In terms of gameplay, there are two sets of twelve levels to play on the CD version of the game, with only the first twelve of these available on floppy. The levels have to be played through successfully, in order.

Having picked the set of scenarios, lovingly entitled Arcade and Extreme, you choose your vehicle for the first scenario. There are six standard vehicles each with varying main weapon, special weapon shields and speed. The vehicles are all different enough to provide a varied challenges, especially if you decide to play a single vehicle type for the whole game.

Then you're off and into the level itself. Most of the scenarios are either last man standing wins or most points wins (called Normal and Countdown). Normal and countdown confused me as they seemed to be the same thing. Essentially whenever anyone gets blown up, they get put back in a fresh tank. This is one of the least appealing features of the game for me. I am very much of the "When you're out, you're out." school, so this "There, there. Never mind. Have another go." style doesn't appeal to me at all.

When you take a hit, you lose some shield strength. Some of the special weapons can drain quite a lot of shield strength. On destroying an opponent, they conveniently leave behind an "energy core" which looks just like a rotating boiled sweet. Driving over this will restore some lost shield strength. Most of these are lime flavoured, but the raspberry ones restore loads of shielding.

You start with two shots of special weapon and can reload these to a maximum of five by driving under floating searchlights imaginatively called reloading platforms. The special weapons vary a bit but have three main types: Easy to aim, some damage. Hard to aim, lots of damage. Homing, a bit of damage (or in one case, temporary blindness). In any event, the special weapons all need to be practised with to get the most out of them, and each has markedly different effects.

Scoring

Scoring is fairly simple. If you blow someone up, you get loads of points. If you get blown up, you lose a few points. One nice feature of the scoring is the revenge points idea. Essentially, if you kill the person who just killed you before anyone else does then you get a load of extra points. Bonus points are awarded for first, second, third and even fourth place. Most points wins the round. In practice, the tactics for the different scenarios doesn't vary much. Kill everyone else and take as few hits as possible.

You have three retries to get all the way through the scenarios. The standard levels consist of you and three opponents in a fairly small area with lots of obstacles. You shoot them. They shoot you. Big thrills.

Every three or four levels, there is a boss level. These are a sort of knockout round with the odds stacked against you. Sometimes, the boss has a large number of happy helpers who you would be well-advised to deal with first. Sometimes, the boss has three hired hands to back him up. Sometimes the boss has all of the above and a special ability too. Basically, more of the same only a teeny (and I mean teeny) bit harder.

Wot, no save game?

Failure to complete a level prevents advancing to the next. The lack of a save game feature could have made this very infuriating if I didn't have so much other stuff to hate. The game is competently put together, runs well and doesn't crash. It also has some good sound and music, but the graphics are only adequate. Of course, this means that two or three years ago they would have been stunning, but time marches on and now they are really nothing special at all. Controller response (in DOS) is crisp and quick.

However, the game is too easy. It has no real variety. It doesn't draw you into it so you get involved. It's a coin-op that you can play without putting money into it all the time.

This means the game is dull. Dull, dull, dull, dull. DULL!

Network

No. Wait! Just a minute... What's this bit here? Network/Serial support? Maybe some good will come of this after all. I spent several hours trying to figure out why this wouldn't work when I came across a small footnote in the moderately poor manual explaining that "There are no multiplayer capabilities for T-Mek." Ho hum!

Conclusion

In brief, if you enjoyed T-Mek in the arcades, you'll get more of the same here. If you liked Comanche for the gameplay rather than the graphics, you'll like this. If you want plot, challenging gameplay or engrossing graphics, simply look elsewhere. A nice try from the previous generations greatest names, but they need to get up there with those on the cutting edge if they want to succeed.

The Marauder for Game-Over!