Blade

STORY / GAMEPLAY
You are Blade, Point Lancer of the Guardian Legion, who's mission is to defend Earth. After years of training, it came the time for hibernation, a necessity to keep the Legion in eternal vigilance. With all your knowledge, you entered the stasis chamber, hoping never to be awakened for your designed purpose. But suddenly your are no longer in the Legion Base, but on a grassy knoll in the middle of a strange alien forest... Your mission is now to discover the fate of the Guardian Legion and defeat the oppressors of humanity!
Blade consists of five levels with three screens at each level. The idea behind the game is to collect all the Teleporter Pods by walking over or attacking them. If there are more they will pop up after the previous is collected. When you collect them all, the handle will appear on the Teleporter, get back to it and ATTACK the handle so that to destory it and get transported to the next screen. Along the way you ill find power-up Pods, these can give you more life as well as speed. But before you can teleport to the next level, at the end of it, a Guardian awaits, banning exit to the next level, so you need to get rid of it too. Well, Blade is a rather difficult game, mainly because of its jerky controls, especially when trying to avoid traps or jump between platforms or even reaching them, and this is a major glich for such kind of games. I would recommend this game only because of its challenging puzzles, its good graphics and sound, rather than its gameplay. Don't avoid it, just try it and then decide its future in your Macintosh games library.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
Well, as being said, controls are rather frustrating here, though its good 256-colored visuals and atmospheric sampled sound saves the day a bit. Sprites are nicely detailed as well as the backdrops, but the animation is somewhat jerky - and probably the main reason behind its awful controls.