Venus The Flytrap (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
60Venus the Flytrap is a half-way house between Chrome, Switchblade 2 and Zool. The game features really great characters, shaded background and music, with a unique animated introduction. The title felt like a step above the norm at the time, so lets see if it is still fun today.
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Production Notes:
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Captured: 18th Dec 2017 (752 x 572 size), 17th January 2018, and 5th July 2018
Narrated: 1st Oct 2020
Edited: 5th July 2018, 2020?, 17-20th Jan 2021
Yes, this review has been lurking around my dusty shelf for so long, it was just a matter of time until it crept out through the gap underneath the door, rubbing its forearms together. Games about house Flys were probably never too common, and I can only think of James Fly on the C64.
When this came out in 1990, there wasnt much on the platforming scene which touched it for graphics, music, and overall Amiga charm. Before this I had only seen Apprentice by Rainbow Arts, also a 1990 game. Back then, any game with arcade quality graphics on the Amiga stood out a mile. It was the difference between Menace and Bloodmoney - such a leap ahead in quality, in the span of 1988 to 1989, 1989 to 1990. Certainly this could still be an Atari ST port, but there was enough here to make this feel like a proper conversion.
Coming back to the game in 2017, the experience felt a bit underwhelming compared to later platformers. But the core game mechanics were just as I remember them. I cant remember much about the recording, except I went back to record the later levels in January and July 2018. I must have spent a long time editing this, because when I loaded up the review in 2021, virtually all of the extra's, captions, quotes and special features were in there. I added the CU Amiga magazine and the cover disks, and a few other bits. I had a lot of time to work on this, so that's why the review is packed with little bits. Normally I dont have that much time to fiddle with the details. This makes the video feel hand crafted, and more like the old reviews.
Upload Bugs:
The video has been 'Processing HD' version since Thursday, at some point the 1440k version should start to work.
Danscore:
Venus the Flytrap opens big and bold, with a great introduction sequence and very atmospheric futuristic music. The presentation for a low price Gremlin title cuts above a lot of the lesser products on the market from that time, and opens the experience with a bang. The game itself is too easy on level 1; which is a basic training level. From level 3 onward it becomes gradually more of a challenge - with enemies directly firing on target, a selection of traps, and not to mention dead ends in the landscape. This last foible is slightly more significant, as rushing in blindly towards the action ultimately leads to getting stuck, and much swearing and tantrums, which seem unfair. They fixed this with Zool and later platformers, so I guess this was the learning curve. Overall, a game which promises so much from the initial boot up only delivers on half of its promise. Sure the graphics and music improve with the levels, but the average player will get bored somewhere around World 3, with nothing to keep them from screaming except a bunch of passwords. I give this 6.5 out of 10. The controls are very good, the difficulty is not too difficult, but there is not enough here to recommend it over Turrican or even Brian the Lion. A game I will always fondly remember.