[MS-DOS games review] Overkill - The Six-Planet Mega Blast!
[Old games with @zulman].
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Hello Steemians..., How are you all doing?
Back again with me @zulman discussing another old games in order to bring back sweet old days memories for those of you who ever heard about the game and giving you information about some best old games for those of you who never heard about it. In today's post, I would like to talk about the game that still belong to the genre of Racing, the game called "Overkill".
Welcome back to my blog everyone. Let's today discuss another old MS-DOS game. For today's post, i would like to discuss about on the game that belong to the genre of shooter. This game is a vertical scrolling shooter game. What does it mean is that the player will have a top-view perspective when playing the game. and the game will be played by scrolling up and down while maneuvering in the screen to avoid or fire the enemies.
The short story of this game is you are as the player play as a pilot that just arrive at your home planet after a quite long space flight. But, you were shocked to find out that your home planet has been destroyed by the demonic warlike alien race. They are killing for sheer pleasure and you are as the last of your race and for revenge. The player only quest in this video game is to destroy the alien' leader that heavily armoured that locate at the end of planet 6. However, before the player can reach the planet 6, the player need to battle the way through massive level of danger. The player also need to free all other six planet that also has been occupied by the aliens.
This interesting storyline make me personally interest to play and try this game. Then after I play for some time, i found that the gameplay is not that great but it is good to kill some boring time while playing this game. The gameplay is very easy, you do not need any hard thinking or any difficult strategy to play this game. and because of that, i found myself love playing this game. It is fun, easy and also interesting to play.
Well, before we are going to talk in details about DESCENT video game, as usual I would like to make a quick reminder that although this game have a combat gameplay, this game is not violent at all. The character that we destroy in the game is not in human or animal form, instead it is in form of an alien. So, this game could be played by a wider range of age. Another good thing is that, the gameplay of this game is very easy. In fact, it is so easy that even a kid do not need much time to master how to play this game. So, Go ahead and have fun playing this game. But, before that, let's take a look at the game first.
Alright, Now, Let's start talking about this game. We will start about the history, development and give my opinion on this game at the end of this article.
Now, let's begin by learning a bit about this video game.
OVERKILL.
Image Source : Wikipedia
Overkill video games is a video game that belong to the genre of a vertical scrolling shooter. This video games was developed by Tech-Noir and published by Epic MegaGames. This video game also have another name or known with another name which is Overkill: The Six-Planet Mega Blast. This video game was design by Ste Cork and release for MS-DOS platform in the year of 1992.
Computer World Gamming, an American magazine for games said about this game:
Overkill "provides a graphically attractive package. Music and sound effects are also handled capably ... those who like challenging play will feel right at home".
According to them, this game has some of attractive graphical. However, although computer world say that, in fact, this video games is a bit lacking in term of the technology that they use if we compared to another title that was release in the same era. although the game is lacing in technology, this video game did sell a considerable amount of copies, But, unfortunately the game was overshadowed with another game that came later with similar genre.
This video game, Overkill has two version of it. There are a shareware version and the commercial version. This happened because of a certain business practice. After one year release, PSP (Precision Software Publishers) who has the right to publish the game before was lost the right. Then after this, the game was re-release as the shareware version where in the shareware version, the player will allows to play planets one and two. while the commercial one get access to all planets.
Now, here is the summary of the game development.
- Developers : Tech-Noir
- Publishers : Epic MegaGames
- Designer : Ste Cork
- Platform : DOS
- Release : 1992
- Genre : Scrolling Shooter
- Mode : Single Player
Alright, now let's talk a little bit about the story of the game in details.
In term of the story, the game also have an interesting story. The storyline of this game is start with a pilot who has been handed a very difficult job or mission. The player of this game will play as the pilot role. The assignment that the player of the pilot get is to destroy the menacing alien forces. These alien forces have captured six(6) of planets. These planets located in our neighboring allied solar system. After the alien captured the planets, they also enslaved it's inhabitants, so that is why the mission of these game is to destroy those aliens.
Overkill Gameplay
In term of the gameplay, this video game have a rather straightforward gameplay. The main objective of this video game gameplay is to eliminate or to destroy all the enemies on a planet. The player need to destroy all the enemies on a planet in order to restore or to bring back the order in the planet. In order to destroy the enemies, the player will use a space craft or a ship that has some basic capabilities and necessities such as fuel, shields, and also a weapon off course. However, the ship also can be upgrade in order to be able to power up to make the ship stronger so it can destroy the enemies quickly. This upgrade is available by picking up various items while playing. These items could be drop by the enemies that has been destroyed.
The ship also have limitation to it health. The ship health need to be taken care carefully. Otherwise the game will be over. The ship's health will decrease every time the ship is being hit by the enemies projectiles or it can also decrease by running into the enemy ship (crash) also, the player need to be careful with the walls since it is also can damage the ship and decrease the health of the ship. The ship has a shield meter as will. Once this shield meter is depleted, the ship will be destroyed and cost a live.
There are 6 arena to play for this game in total. When the game first start, the player will be asked to select which arena or in this case which planet that the player want to play the game. These planet off course have different setting and different enemy as well. these 6 planet are: Edrax, Voltair, Gallfrey, Pax Verde, Hoth, and Unknown. see image below for the planet and difficulties selection screen.
In this video game, in term of difficulties level, there are 3 difficulties level available, those are, easy, medium, and hard. This difficulties level can be chosen by the player when the player at the beginning of opening the game. Before the game is started, the player will be asked to choose the difficulties level the the corresponding player want to play. The difficulties level can be chosen by navigating with arrow keys, just press arrow key left or right and after that, hit space bar to choose what difficulties level the player want to play.
Now, let's learn first how to control the space craft.
Keyboard Control.
In term of control, there is not much control the player need to learn. For most of the part, there are only 5 control. The details is a shown in the table below.
| Key | Function |
|---|---|
| Up Arrow | Go up |
| Down Arrow | Go Down |
| Left Arrow | Turn Left |
| Right Arrow | Turn Right |
| Space Bar | Fire |
Alright, here are some screenshots of the gameplay, you can see the image on how the games is look like.
Here are some screenshots of the game
The screenshots is taken from online play
My opinion about Overkill video games.
After spending some time playing this game, I could say that this game is very interesting game to play and this video game also a video game that is fun to play. There is no need for deep thinking to play this game, this game is relatively easy to play and because of that, even kids will be able to play this game. So, for those of you who want to relax yourself while also want to play some game. This video game, Overkill is worth trying for. It is fun, easy and interesting video game to play. For me personally, I would recommended it for you.
Alright, if you want to experience the game, let's take a look at how to set up the computer to play the game with DOSBox.
>> Setting Up your PC or Mac to play Overkill Video Game
>>Download Overkill
You can download the game from this link Download Overkill
The game that you download come with an archive, you need to extract it and then run it with DOSBox. You can find how to run the game inside DOSBox below.
>>Setup your computer to play Overkill
Before you can play the game, you need to install DOSBox. Then you will be able to play the game in DOSBox, Here are the step to do it.
- Open DOSBox and mount to game folder (Check out the video at the bottom of the article to see how to do it)
- Navigate Overkill folder games that you have downloaded and extracted.
- Execute OK.EXE file to play the game.
If you do not know how to install DOSBox on your PC or Mac? Check out this video
Check out this video bellow about how to setup DOSBox on your computer.
>> Lazy to install DOSBox? Play it Online
If you found that installing the game is complicated or you just do not want to install DOSBox or maybe lazy to install another tools to your computer? The are a good news for you, as this is an old games, you can play the game online. There is no need any install required, just open the website and you are ready to go.
Here is the link to play Overkill video games online. Overkill Online
Keep writing bro....
Thank you @agoesdeuge