Galactic Tomb – Amstrad Review

Galactic Tomb, developed by ESP Soft, is a run’n gun style of game for the Amstrad CPC that sees you take the role of an elite commander of the imperial army, who has been appointed to carry out a mission to retrieve magical objects from the tombs of kings who once ruled these worlds in order to extend the lifespan of your ailing emperor.

To complete your mission you will need to explore through three different worlds of hostile enemies and terrain. The first world, Pherenos, is a volcano planet featuring hot lave and rocky platforms to navigate. Robota, the second world, is technology based with lots of laser beam and canon hazards before we finish off by jumping into a mini-submarine to tackle the underwater world, Microbia. In addition to the variety of game worlds on offer, Galactic Tomb does a good job of breaking up the action by not confining your navigation to just running around. You will find a jet pack on offer in the second world while the final world changes the game play to something closer akin to Cybernoid as you play out the level solely within the mini-sub.

However, I did often find myself wishing that the game offered something more from a weapons perspective. At times, I was looking for some sort of bomb or a weapon of greater fire power so that I could just run along and blast everything quickly without sustaining any damage. Without these, I found my progress to be a somewhat slow as I had to cautiously move around the game in order to limit taking shots from enemies who shoot the moment they even get a sniff of you.

Some players will cite the games limited number of levels as a limitation. But to be honest, I felt that the game’s size was just right for what it was offering.  It is easy to get lost wandering around as to try and find the hidden areas that will allow you to progress through the game. Challenge wise, there isn’t too much there as long as your disciplined with how you move through the game. Each level contains a guardian boss battle that are perhaps a little underwhelming and should not be to difficult to get through

The overall presentation within Galactic Tomb is of a high standard that features bright and vibrant graphics, detailed sprites and a backing soundtrack that is just a pleasure to listen as drives you through out the experience. Rather than relying on flick screens to move within the game world, Galactic Tomb takes the adventurous path of using multi-directional scrolling, which for the most part is fast but does suffer from slow down when a lot of things are moving about on the screen, slightly dampening the quality of the arcade gaming experience on offer.

Galactic Tomb is now available in a physical cassette format via Bitmap Soft. This edition differs to the original free digital download version from ESP Soft in that it includes an English translation.

Galactic Tomb is a good run’n’gun game that is very well presented with its polished graphics and good music soundtrack. Game play wise there is nothing necessarily new on offer and the lack of weapon upgrades prevents the game from being spectacular but what is there is sure to get fans of this old school style of play enjoying it.