Gorf

"Not bad, but terribly unoriginal"

Gorf is basically just another Space Invaders clone with a few new missions and innovations to make it interesting. In Gorf, you control a small ship much like the same one you control in Space Invaders. To defend yourself, you have a single gun, which can shoot one shot at a time. If at any point you shoot again, any shots already on the screen will immediately disappear. There are four different missions in this game: Astro Battles, Laser Attack, Space Warp, and Flag Ship. Astro Battles is the mission in this game that is almost exactly like Space Invaders. There are three rows of six aliens, making a total of eighteen aliens. They will slowly progress towards the bottom of the screen and if any of them touch it or you are hit by their fire, you will lose a life. As the aliens move towards the bottom, they will start to move faster and faster. Once they are all destroyed, or one reaches the ground, you will proceed onto the next mission, Laser Attack. This mission is much different. There are five enemies in this one. One shoots lasers, and the others will swoop at you until they are all destroyed. These enemies also move towards the ground, but at a much faster pace. The third mission, Space Warp, has five enemies in it. They start from a central point and move in a circular motion around that point until you destroy them. They are aggressive towards you. They only come one at a time and once they are all destroyed, you move onto Flag Ship, the final stage. In Flag Ship, you must destroy a single large ship that shoots at you a lot and slowly moves towards the bottom. Once this is destroyed, you will start over the process at the first mission.

Graphics
The graphics were average for an Atari 2600 game. I didn't particularly like them. The colors used were all very dark and didn't particularly wow me. For one thing, your ship is a rainbow colored U.S.S. Enterprise shaped ship. And you just can't ignore the striking similarities in aliens between this game and Space Invaders. This game was obviously just a rip off of that.

Sound
The sounds were also pretty lack luster. There was absolutely no music and the sound effects were just very average. They sounded just like any game. Though they have that old school sound to them, they weren't too great.

Controls
The controls in this game are pretty easy to master. I didn't really like the fact that if you shot twice, the second shot would always negate the first. I also felt that since most of your enemies moved pretty darn fast, you should have been able to maneuver your ship a little faster than was allowed.

Fun Factor
This is a pretty nice alternative to Space Invaders. Though some of the other missions weren't very great, it is still nice to get a change of scenery too. However, I don't think the new additions in this game really make it that much more worth playing for a long period of time. I still to this day prefer Space Invaders to this game.

Final Words
Overall, I think that Gorf wasn't a bad game. I would have given it a higher score if it was more original. But since it's not very original, I think they could have done a lot more with this game. Gorf is entertaining, but I still prefer the games that it is based on to it.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/24/06