BRATACCAS 

Psygnosis Limited 
US Distributor: Mindscape, Inc. 
3444 Dundee Road 
Northbrook, IL 60062 
(312) 480-7667 
$49.95 

Reviewed by Michael Fleischmann 

Brataccas by England's Psygnosis Limited is an animated adventure game with
ambitious graphics. Your character is Kyne, a hero with a price on his head. You
move through many rooms, gather proof of a government plot and try to stay alive.
Meanwhile, the 60-odd inhabitants of this world are moving as well-and time rolls
on. 

Kyne is a genetic engineer who developed a way to make a super-being in the hopes
of improving the quality of life for his fellow man. But the government has
decided that a race of super killing machines is a better use for Kyne's
discoveries. Kyne, on learning this, refuses to continue his work or reveal what
he had already learned. Thus, he must go into hiding. 

The government issues a warrant for Kyne's arrest, frames him for a crime he did
not commit, and puts out a contract for him with the underworld. A bit of overkill
here. Everyone is out to get this guy. 

While fleeing, Kyne discovers that Brataccas-a small mining asteroid- might hold
the answers he needs, so he ends up there. As Kyne, you must find this proof and
get it to the proper authorities. 

Brataccas, the first colonized asteroid, has become a favorite haunt for miners.
With miners comes money and with money comes corruption. The main things the
residents of Brataccas understand are bribery, corruption and opportunism. They
also enjoy killing each other-which does make staying alive a problem. In other
words, Brataccas is a very rough neighborhood to go snooping around in.

This game comes on an auto-boot disk. While loading, some nice music plays to give
you something to listen to. Then the screen prompts you to press any key to start.
As the music fades, your screen changes to show Kyne appearing in the arrivals
bay. 

At this point you can start playing or press the [HELP] key to display the options
menu. This menu is very important as it pauses the action, allows you to set up
how you will control Kyne, and gives you the ability to save and restore a game.
It also has a movie mode which puts Kyne on auto-pilot and he plays the game
himself. 

I found the animation to be quite good and smooth. The scenery is well thought out
and detailed. You can even see another planet (moon? asteroid?) setting through a
window. The city is fairly vast with lots of rooms to explore and quite a few to
figure out how to to get into without dying. 

Now the bad news. It seems obvious to me that the main programming effort for
Brataccas was put into the animation and not into the player interface. If you buy
the game, don't even bother trying to play it with a joystick or mouse.
Controlling Kyne reliably with either of these in a critical situation is nearly
impossible. And even with the keyboard it takes a lot of practice.

The animation slows down to a crawl if more than two characters are on screen at
the same time. Another bothersome trait is that if you fall down from a raised
area all the items you are carrying will drop to the floor and the other
characters try to pick them up. (Some might consider this a feature, but I found
it very annoying.) 

If you want to pick up anything off the floor, you had better have patience. One
time, it took me twenty tries to get an object off the floor. Objects are another
irritation. Even though you are carrying the objects you cannot examine them, read
them, or do anything else with them but drop them. 

The authors say their interface "implies action," which means that the game tries
to sense what you want to do and will proceed to do it for you. Most of the time
for me, it meant running into walls at full speed. 

Talking to other characters is another matter. You cannot speak to any other
character unless they address you first. When you do get a chance to talk, don't
be too near the other character as your ballon (just like in the comics) goes over
the top of theirs so you end up guessing what the other was saying. 

To sum it all up, for all its impressive graphics and hi-tech, Blade Runner
plotline, I really can't say Brataccas is one of my favorites. It's too slow for
arcade action and too limited for an adventure. It was fun, but less so than I
would expect. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would have to give it a 5. 

Source: ANTIC VOL. 5, NO. 2 / JUNE 1986 / PAGE 90