I dunno… even for 1996 this game seems to make some odd choices for controls.
Not sure what other releases are like, but like Wesbat, in my Australian release the “,” and “.” buttons are the only way to strafe.
“Alt”, which, let’s be honest, has been standard at least since Wolf3D, does nothing.
I could never get my head around strafing as a kid, but I’ve since learned to love it, so it’s implementation incredibly awkward here. But I am playing on real hardware, so I guess I am partially to blame.
Other than that the controls aren’t really TOO bad for the time. They’re obviously going to be a little atypical given the mixing of genres, but apart from the strafing issues it actually feels fairly natural.
As far as menus and other functions and options go I’m a bit more puzzled. Why does it feel like every menu and subscreen follows a different set of rules and has to be accessed in a different way? Why are things like resolution and gamma assigned to random keys when there’s plenty of room in the already sparse options menus?
The manual doesn’t do a great job of clearing it up either – there is a short list of keys, but they’re only for movement.
What other commands you might need are hidden in the middle of passages of text, if they’re mentioned at all. No easy to reference quick guide in my version. (To be fair, I only have the jewel case, not a big box, so perhaps a quick guide was included in that.)
All that being said, what little I’ve played of this so far I’ve quite enjoyed and I’m looking forward to playing more. I’m trying to take the interface with a grain of salt – I know the era was known for baffling interface options, and I’m sure it won’t take me long to get used to it.
