Dark Castle review - Sega Megadrive

Oh my word! Dark Castle takes me back to the days when no one could program the Amiga properly and instead came out with pathetic graphics and gratuitous sampled sound. Funnily enough, that's exactly what Dark Castle is. There are no original ideas on offer here. The platform game is fundamentally simple and the graphics are truly bad, with tiny, ill-defined sprites wobbling around Spectrum-esque backdrops. The control method is really awful, with very unresponsive action. The method used to change the direction of firing is slow and makes for many a frustrating death. One thing's for sure - the hero in this game is a real weed. Even touching a small rat results in a violent and sudden death. Dark Castle's only redeeming feature is the sound - the sampled effects are pretty good. However, that factor apart, I can't recommend this sad effort at all.

This game is so bad, criticising it is like kicking a sad, retarded cripple while he's down. Apart from the laughable sampled sound, everything about it is diabolical. The graphics look like they've been lifted from a particularly crap Master System game - well, look at the screenshots and agree. What you can't see, though, is the movement of the rubbish zombie sprites. These hobbling hunchbacks have very dubious appendages which become erect when you approach. Quite what they are is difficult to ascertain due to the fact that they're so badly drawn, so I'd better not ponder any further. Gameplay? Well, where is it, that's what I want to know. It's challenging, but for all the wrong reasons. You spend most of your time battling the stupid control method, rather than the baddies. The way you throw stones is pathetically slow, and the collision detection is so dodgy it had me yelling with frustration. Within a few hours I'd had enough, and Dark Castle was dumped. If a gameplayer went to hell, this is the game he'd be made to play.