Silent Thunder Demo
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Last modified 2012-04-22 16:27:55
The Silent Thunder demo was the second-to-last release by Eon Entertainment, creators of such games as Spongko's Legendary Journey and Tae Kwon Do Joe. It is an RPG demo, and, being released hot on the tail of MZX 2.51 s1, is the first to take advantage of its new features such as mouse support and the ballooned limit on counters from 50 to 1000, which made the RPG genre as a whole a much more feasible option for MZX games. This demo showed some promise for what could have been an excellent finished game, but is severely flawed in this form and not really an enjoyable experience to play, for several reasons.
First of all, the game's engines and execution are mediocre at best. The game was put out shortly following the release of MZX 2.51 s1, and the status screen takes advantage of this version's newly-impelemented mouse support, but it just seems like a pointless novelty here; the keyboard would have worked fine. What's more, party leader selection is broken here, as you are unable to abort this command (or leave the status menu) once you initiate it. All interaction on the overworld is done using a special menu system, which would have felt less awkward if it were initiated with space rather than A, and selection were smoother, but that's probably just me.
The RPG battles offered combat against multiple enemies, which wasn't in many MZX releases at the time, and never before fully playable like this one (as far as I know). They are in semi-active time, which, if done well, is usually a good thing. However, a glaring problem with this system is that the enemies seem to attack at complete random, independent of any timer they might have, and they can also execute counter-attacks on your characters. The result is a fight heavily biased towards the enemies where they can drain all your HP with you barely leaving a dent in them. For me, battles up until after the dojo scene always boiled down to saving on the menu and saving again if you dealt more damage than your enemies, since that seemed like the only way to get through them. To make things worse, you have to watch each character on the battlefield, often larger than 1x1, plod up to their target before attacking and then move back to their spot in the same manner. This is totally unnecessary, making the battles move at a sluggish pace and necessitating playing the game on speed 1 if you want to avoid falling asleep.
What's offered of the plot in this demo is nothing too special, but you can't expect much, since it's only the first hour or so of the game. I will say that figuring out what to do in the game is a struggle until halfway through the visit to the town, due in part to the awkwardness of the interaction system. The dialogue, for the most part, is pretty lame and unrealistic, and has a bunch of typos and smileys strewn throughout.
The game's graphics are the typical Eon style; they look like they took a lot of effort to make, but most of the game isn't really pleasing to the eye. Dale's house and the town in the screenshot above, in particular, suffer from some very questionable color choices. With the exception of the forest, the battle backgrounds are bland and featureless. The characters, menus, and status portraits look okay, though some poses are kind of awkward.
As for sound, Eon eschewed most music this time in favor of ambience, which is okay, I guess. However, I found the lightning in particular to be unrealistic, and way too loud compared to the other music and ambience; I am in the middle of thunderstorm central right now (east coast USA circa 2009), and the lightning strikes over here have yet to reach such a frequency during any storm. The other two ripped songs, for the title and battles, are okay; nothing special, but they get the job done. The sound effects are mostly homebrew microphone stuff and pretty funny to listen to at first, but get old after a while.
Overall, this demo may have been decent when it was released, but it has failed to stand up to the test of time, especially compared to other games available today. It might be worth playing through just once for the historic value, but other than that, I don't recommend it.
First of all, the game's engines and execution are mediocre at best. The game was put out shortly following the release of MZX 2.51 s1, and the status screen takes advantage of this version's newly-impelemented mouse support, but it just seems like a pointless novelty here; the keyboard would have worked fine. What's more, party leader selection is broken here, as you are unable to abort this command (or leave the status menu) once you initiate it. All interaction on the overworld is done using a special menu system, which would have felt less awkward if it were initiated with space rather than A, and selection were smoother, but that's probably just me.
The RPG battles offered combat against multiple enemies, which wasn't in many MZX releases at the time, and never before fully playable like this one (as far as I know). They are in semi-active time, which, if done well, is usually a good thing. However, a glaring problem with this system is that the enemies seem to attack at complete random, independent of any timer they might have, and they can also execute counter-attacks on your characters. The result is a fight heavily biased towards the enemies where they can drain all your HP with you barely leaving a dent in them. For me, battles up until after the dojo scene always boiled down to saving on the menu and saving again if you dealt more damage than your enemies, since that seemed like the only way to get through them. To make things worse, you have to watch each character on the battlefield, often larger than 1x1, plod up to their target before attacking and then move back to their spot in the same manner. This is totally unnecessary, making the battles move at a sluggish pace and necessitating playing the game on speed 1 if you want to avoid falling asleep.
What's offered of the plot in this demo is nothing too special, but you can't expect much, since it's only the first hour or so of the game. I will say that figuring out what to do in the game is a struggle until halfway through the visit to the town, due in part to the awkwardness of the interaction system. The dialogue, for the most part, is pretty lame and unrealistic, and has a bunch of typos and smileys strewn throughout.
The game's graphics are the typical Eon style; they look like they took a lot of effort to make, but most of the game isn't really pleasing to the eye. Dale's house and the town in the screenshot above, in particular, suffer from some very questionable color choices. With the exception of the forest, the battle backgrounds are bland and featureless. The characters, menus, and status portraits look okay, though some poses are kind of awkward.
As for sound, Eon eschewed most music this time in favor of ambience, which is okay, I guess. However, I found the lightning in particular to be unrealistic, and way too loud compared to the other music and ambience; I am in the middle of thunderstorm central right now (east coast USA circa 2009), and the lightning strikes over here have yet to reach such a frequency during any storm. The other two ripped songs, for the title and battles, are okay; nothing special, but they get the job done. The sound effects are mostly homebrew microphone stuff and pretty funny to listen to at first, but get old after a while.
Overall, this demo may have been decent when it was released, but it has failed to stand up to the test of time, especially compared to other games available today. It might be worth playing through just once for the historic value, but other than that, I don't recommend it.