Cataclysm

The Good
Back when I was a child, one of the many games I played on my Commodore 64 involved nuking a city below a plane that flies from left to right, piece by piece. Cataclysm is similar to that game, but the plane is replaced by four types of aliens that do the job for you. The game is presented in a first-person perspective rather than a side-on view, and you move a cross-hair over an alien and fire.

Each of the aliens is distinguishable from each other, and the score you get from them varies depending on where they are. Some of these aliens are dumb, often getting in the way of another who has dropped a bomb, therefore destroying itself. And speaking of bombs, you can destroy a bomb mid-air. The metropolis below looks good, with the skyscrapers having different colors to make them stand out from each other. I like the way some of them even wear hats. I believe that Cataclysm is one of the first games to employ rapid fire; instead of hitting the fire button every time you want to make a kill, you can just hold it down and hover over any alien.

As much as you enjoy shooting down these aliens, let’s face it: the destruction of the metropolis is inevitable. When it finally happens, the action on the screen pauses to make way for a white figure playing “The Last Post”. Then the title screen appears, and the metropolis is rebuilt as if nothing ever happened. The game records your high score and displays it on the title screen, along with your last score. It is also here that you can change the difficulty level from nought to nine. Good luck playing this game on level nine.

The Bad
There is nothing wrong with this game.

The Bottom Line
Cataclysm is an addictive game where you move a cross-hair around the screen, using it to shoot down aliens before they can damage the metropolis. I love the colorful graphics and the rapid fire mechanic, and the figure performing “The Last Post” is a nice touch as well. Anyone who owns a VIC-20 can play this game, regardless of how much memory they have.