Hi there!

Considering how much I love Encounter, I always wanted to have a look at this one:

I'm not sure if it was really advertised as Encounter sequel, but well - it basically is. As the legend is told, Paul Woakes wanted to write an Encounterish 16-Bit game as soon as he had finished the Atari ST port of Mercenary, resulting in Backlash.

Well, Backlash became a very fast 3D Shoot em up, much faster than Encounter. It's also pretty chaotic. There's zillions of things moving on the screen, like dozens of your own shots, enemies and their shots, explosions and other dots and particles (see screenshot above).

Instead of helping the player, the HUD radar right in the center of the screen also seems to add more to the confusion of the player than anything else.

Gone are the waves and warp scenes inbetween them (not necessarily a bad thing ), all that's left is some kind of day/night cycle that'll make the game slightly more confusing at night. What's left is the very core of a game, pretty much like a 2600 shmup or Jeff Minter game. Nothing bad about that in general, albeit it's getting a bit pointless after a while

Personally I prefer Encounter by a mile, as it feels a lot more realistic than this rather abstract exercise.

Some future day the "Playing..." series may see Paul Woakes next 3D game "Damocles", but before it'll continue with something else.

Greetings,

Manuel