Magnetron
Hi there!
Here comes the next Graftgold title! After Paradroid and Uridium another re-visit with
Magnetron
Ratings:
Zzap! Rating: 67%
Staff: Andrew Braybrook (Additional graphics) Steve Turner (everything else)
Historical notes:
Following my articles, one might think by now that Graftgold was a one-man show. In fact tough, it was a two-man show. While I was reviewing the C64 titles only, Steve Turner wrote just as many games for the Spectrum, most being classics there on their own. So Magnetron here is the sequel of a Spectrum only title called Quazatron. This time Steve Turner did versions for both machines though, so we finally see one of his games in an article of mine as well. By the time Magnetron came out, Dominic Robinson and John Cumming joined Graftgold as well, so their staff just doubled. They both came from Hewson, previously working on games like Anarchy, Firelord and Zynaps. (You can find the later two on the C64 DTV)
Evolution:
Since the basic gameplay can be quickly described in one sentence with "Paradroid in 3D", let me skip the descriptive part here and go straight into a detailed comparission of the two games here.
The major difference, of course are the 3D grafix. Or, as I probably should better say, the isometric perspective. This is already granting to give the game a feel of it's own. It goes significanly up and down in this game, with our droid (which is called KLP2 BTW) following some detailed gravity physics. The changed perspective also makes the game a bit slower, as navigation through the levels is more complicated than in Paradroid and you have to be more carefull, since falling down somewhere can (and will) seriously damage your droid. One clear advantage of the changed perspective is the detailed droid graphics, giving them a lot more personality than the iconic droids of Paradroid.
KLP2 has again a speciality of rewiring other droids circuits in order to control them. Here the process is called "grappling", which is again executed in a minigame. it's different from Paradroid, but a lot of fun as well. You have to rearrange a grif of 9 symbols in order to deactivate a droids self destruction mechanism.
Another difference is the mission target. While in Paradroid your mission was to destroy every robot in the whole ship, here your task is to disable 4 power reactors in each ship. That makes your strategies differ significantly, since when going berzerk on plain seek & destroy, you'll often kill your own supplies, as it's better to keep some smaller enemies alive for your own reserve in case you need an emergency grappling 
The weapons are pretty much the same as in Paradroid, only they're not as effective in 3D, so I find myself playing mostly with grappling alone.
All in all, I'm considering Magnetron to be a thinking mans Paradroid
Fun in 2006:
Still an awesome experience. It takes a little while to make the transition coming from Paradroid, adopting to the numerous differences, but after a while it can spark nearly the same "fever" as Paradroid does. Just one more try...
Greetings,
Manuel
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