Dangerous Dave In The Haunted Mansion (PC)

Dangerous Dave In The Haunted Mansion (PC) :

Before John Romero and the Carmacks started the whole FPS craze with Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, they developed this fun little platform shooter! A sequel to an earlier platform game, Dangerous Dave, this has us take control of Dave as he enters a haunted mansion to look for his brother Delbert!

Armed with a shotgun, we travel through 8 levels of spooks and traps, blowing baddies apart into bloody chunks and leaping over various walls and obstacles, opening doors to reach further into the depths of the mansion.The enemies are a nicely varied bunch, with Frankenstein Monsters, Witchy-looking little imps, spiders, slimes and others all out to put a stop to Delbert's rescue.

Good job then that you get decent control of your gun and are able to aim it at different angles to help dispose of them before you come a cropper! But useful though the shotgun is, it will require reloading...something which you better remember to do after blasting every few fiends, or you'll end up witnessing one of the many animated death scenes that pop up in a nice little panel every time you pop your clogs....

It's a great little platformer and heaps of fun! The feel of the shotgun feels strangely familiar if you've played Doom too, even though the games are in different perspectives..which is a bit odd! But yeah, find a copy of this if you can and you should find yourself suitably pleased!

Night Hunter (ZX Spectrum)

Night Hunter (ZX Spectrum) :

Having already looked at how to battle bloodsuckers, we now switch sides and take a bite at life as a vampire! And not just any old sucker, but Dracula himself! He's on a mission to gather up some old parchments and thwart Van Helsing's plan to put him into a daisy-pushing position for good.....

These parchments are lying around all over the place, and taking control of our old bloody...sorry...buddy...you'll have to find various keys and objects to help find them all. Trying to put a stop to this are various helpers of Van Helsing. Well, I say trying to put a stop to it....the men will come along and give you a punch in the face every now and again, but the women just seem to run around not doing much at all really. Still, they all provide a rather handy source of blood and health for Drac at least!

Not like the witches who are flying around all over the place...they seem to have something against vampires and will also bash you around a bit. Luckily, being a vampire has other perks which come in handy, and the ability to change into a bat or a werewolf for a short time helps you avoid these hags and also the various pits and holes which also litter the landscape. It takes a while to work out how best to use these other forms though, and I spent a good deal of time falling through holes and getting confused to begin with...

Once you get used to it though, the game is really quite enjoyable! Nothing startling by any means, but it's nice to play as the baddie every once in a while! It's also available on various other platforms from the era too, so even if you don't have a Speccy there's a good chance you can still experience some Helsing harassment on your system of choice......