KMGR of "Great Legends: The Minotaur"

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While the description make it sound cool, the actual description will leave you severely disappointed.

GL:M is about the Minotaur, which is supposedly a beast that is so powerful and can't be killed, it was imprisoned in a maze. You get to penetrate the maze, avoid all the nasty stuff within, and save your girl, basically. In Ancient Greece, no less. While this sounds exciting, in reality this game is more closely related to Pac-Man (tm) than any adventure game.

You see, you get to run around this "maze", filled with deadly traps, nasties like Gorgons (which slows you down), and of course, the Minotaur himself. You need to collection 2 of the 4 keys scattered throughout the level. There are gold coins along the floor. Collect as many gold coins as you can, as well as the two out of four keys, and try to make it to the exit before Minotaur chases you down.

So what's the catch? You actually have unlimited lives, just a ticking clock. In other words, if you don't get to the exit in X seconds (a count-down is on screen) you get to restart the level. If you get hit for a trap, or struck down by minotaur, Daedalus will move you back to the closest revival point (a "blue lamp"). If you pass more blue lamps as you explore the maze (for more gold coins, of course) you will activate it, thus making it available should you need to be revived later.

There are also occasional "staircases" which act as "intra-level warp", taking you from one section of level to another.

Once you got two of the four available keys, the exit door opens, and minotaur appears, and he is fast, but he doesn't turn corners that well, so if you make turns quickly, you may stay ahead of it long enough to reach to exit and move onto the next level. However, that brings us to the biggest problem of the game... unresposive controls.

You see, in a game like this, responsive controls are a must. How else will you duck into the correct passageway without hitting the trap(s)? Yet this game's controls are laggy, and very painful to play. You see, your guy once he goes in one directlon, he doesn't stop. So if you press LEFT, he keeps running left until you give him some other input. Even Pac-Man (tm) doesn't do that. If you leave the stick untouched, Pac-Man doesn't move. This lousy control sceme makes doing precision moves all about the timing. One slight bit off, and you are toast. Why should a game be this intolerant of player?

There are occasional powerups like "super-speed", "invisible", and so on, but those are too little and too late. All in all, this game manage to ruin a good concept and turn it into something that's extremely derivative and fun-lacking.

Overall score: 3 out of 10 (lowest ever given!)
Pros: controls are simple, premise sounds cool
Cons: it's just dressed-up Pac-Man with lousy controls