I am a bit of a grumpy old bugger if I am honest. I have reached that point in life where, if something doesn't please me then I don't waste my time on it. I certainly get irritated more easily than I did twenty years ago, which doesn't bode well for Zool: Ninja of the Nth Dimension...

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Zool: Ninja of the Nth Dimension was released for the Amiga in 1992 and was intended (as so many 'mig platform releases were) to be a rival to Sonic and Mario. It is a smooth, bright, colourful and fast moving platform game, featuring ‘Zool’ who is (can you guess?) a ‘Ninja of the Nth Dimension’. This means he is a weird alien thing with a mask on, who looks quite like an ant with four legs (or two legs and two arms. Do ants have arms? I digress...).

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The story is that Zool has to navigate seven lands and beat the final boss of each in order to become a Ninja. He can jump, run, climb, crouch and slide into enemies killing them. He can also spin attack if you press fire while jumping. He can fire his weapon to dispatch the many bad guys and along the way he can collect extra power-ups to help him progress, including: a smart bomb, an ability to split into two doubling his firepower, a double height jump,  a shield, a time bonus and (of course) the obligatory extra lives.

 

Gameplay is pretty standard platform fare, though you will encounter a number of mini games which break things up a bit. The introduction music is a fairly painful techno tune, with the remaining in-game effects being decidedly unremarkable. At the time of release Commodore threw its weight behind the game, making it the lead title in the Amiga ‘Zool pack’ which was bundled with the (then) new Amiga 1200, the pack also including the excellent Pinball Dreams, somewhat less than excellent Striker and useful but probably underused Transwrite. The combined Amiga press gave the game almost universally high scores upon release, with many rating the game in the ninety-something percentage range.

 

But for me, it just doesn’t happen. The end result is simply not the sum of the parts, with a number of negative aspects that spoil the game. Firstly, the screen can become quite cluttered with foreground, background, stuff to collect, enemies, bullets and the flying fragments of things you have just shot. I have mentioned this before in other reviews but I will say it again; 8% of the male population are shade blind and I am one of them. If you get overly ambitious with too many objects and colours flying about, all some of us see is a confusing mush.

 

The worlds are quite samey too and, while the theme changes, the gameplay doesn't. It doesn't take long before you start to feel that there is nothing new to see. I have never been particularly enamoured by platform games that use random blocks scattered about for no apparent reason to form the play area. I much prefer those where you feel as if you are navigating something that feels more real and logical, with the platforms forming part of the overall landscape. Gods, Ruff 'n' Tumble and Superfrog are examples where the player is presented with a more ‘realistic’ world to explore. Simply dumping a series of random shapes across the screen feels lazy and gives the game zero character (and before anyone shouts “Super Mario Bros” at me, I will certainly concede that some of the Mario games can be guilty of this and if the rest of Zool was as perfect as any Mario game then I would be more than prepared to make an exception!).

 

Unfortunately, it isn't. In fact the game irritates endlessly by committing virtually every cardinal sin possible for a platform game. Frequent blind jumps which often turn out to be into spiked pits or onto bad guys? Check. Annoying icy sections that make controlling your (already quite skittish) character just that bit more unpleasant? Check. Traps that come out of the floor and take your energy with zero warning? Check. Tricky wall climbs to negotiate only to be ambushed at the top and knocked back down, to either have to start the climb again or onto spikes to die? Check. Bad guys that re-spawn endlessly so you can clear an area; jump back five seconds later and get overwhelmed? Check. It feels as if Gremlin spent weeks researching the elements that make a platform game annoying and then made sure that all were included. Oh, and while it comes on just two disks, it doesn't recognise a second drive and there are some pretty long loading times.   

 

It also suffers from one of the most unpleasant and in-your-face commercial tie-ins ever seen in a game. Without the funds to complete the title, the developer went cap in hand to lollipop manufacturer Chupa-Chups, signed a sponsorship deal and this resulted in the final game containing more lollipop references than an episode of Kojak. In completing the first ‘sweet world’ it is hard to progress without a Chupa-Chups logo half the size of your screen staring at you.

 

However, putting irritating gameplay, confusing screens, poor level design and tasteless commercial tie-ins aside, the main killer for me was that I simply didn’t care. Some games make you want to protect your character. Zool doesn’t. I would play, I would die and I would start again. There was nothing that made me want to get further, to see more of the game.

 

Platform games are very much my thing. Over the years I have fallen in love with a number of them, including Superfrog and Gods on the ‘mig, Crash Bandicoot on the PlayStation and I have played more than my fair share of Mario games. I have invested many hours to see the very ends of some of those games, but I am afraid that, despite trying many times to progress and be seduced by its colourful ninja-ly antness, Zool still leaves me utterly cold.

 

I realise of course that opinion makes the world go round. There will be those that hate Crash, or Gods, or even Mario. And they are absolutely entitled to their opinion. They may harbour a burning desire to be an alien-ninja-wannabe-ant-thing, in which case they might well enjoy this. It isn't completely dreadful by any means, but the overriding feeling I get whilst playing Zool is one of irritation or even downright annoyance. More than anything it feels like a missed opportunity, because the bones are there. The actual game mechanics aren't bad. His movement is pretty slick and it all runs quickly and smoothly. Had the programmers taken just a little trouble to iron out some of the fairly obvious gameplay faults, it could have been a quite enjoyable little platformer. As it is, I can't even bring myself to play it any further to get any more screen grabs; it really does irk me that much. 

 

So there you are. It is some platform game. Solid enough, but with enough flaws to ultimately make it more annoying than fun and therefore one that I cannot recommend. If you want a top quality and highly enjoyable Amiga platformer with added guns, I suggest you check out Ruff 'n' Tumble which beats Zool into a cocked hat. 

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Graphics - 80%

Bright and very colourful, but a bit cluttered for my taste. Some game developers would have done well to remember that 8% of men are shade blind. 

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Sounds - 45%

What sounds there are aren't particularly impressive. The introduction techno music is fairly unpleasant and in-game you are treated to a series of plinks, plonks and electro-drum sounds that sound like a child playing with the special effects section of a Yamaha keyboard. 

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Grab-Factor - 85%

It is fairly standard platform fare so isn't hard to get the hang of. You may want to consult the manual to see what the various power-ups do but most are self-explanatory. 

 

Playability - 60%

It all works fine. Game mechanics are decent enough, but for me it was all too busy, there were too many platform game clichéd flaws and there was nothing that made me want another go. 

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Verdict- 67%

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AG 17/12/2018

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