Recently a trend in gaming has been to take classic games and revamp them. Cool new effects like 3d, digital sound and full-motion video are added in to make the game better. Sometimes it works, as in the case of Metal Gear Solid or Battlezone. Sometimes it fails miserably and the developers who created the game should be taken out and shot for ruining a classic idea. I feel that the developers of Way Point Zeta should be shot for creating a game that is absolute crap. In every way Way Point Zeta is terrible.

Way Point Zeta is a 3d adaptation of the classic Asteroid concept. You are supposed to fly around space and break up asteroids. When you shoot an asteroid it breaks up into several smaller pieces. In Waypoint Zeta a new twist is added as different color ores and crystals will appear after you break apart the asteroids. Way Point Zeta also threw in enemies that look like they were ripped straight from Wing Commander as well as a mothership that I believe I saw in X-Wing. You are supposed to gather the crystals while defending your mothership. I'll give the developers of Way Point Zeta credit that its not a bad idea. It has just been so poorly executed that I want to gag.

Gameplay: Well, it wouldn't be so bad except that the controls are absolutely terrible. There is no sense of physics. After pressing a key, you roll that direction and then stop. I mean no inertia like in the first Asteroids. You just completely stop. The controls are also quite cumbersome and it is difficult to navigate. The game gives you three different maps that you are supposed to overlay to figure out where enemies are. I can tell you that after an hour of playing it was still impossible for me to figure out where everything was coming from. The mothership concept is cool but it doesn't fit into the concept of the original Asteroids and it just doesn't work. There is no reason to defend the mothership as collecting crystals seems to revitalize your mothership's defenses. On another note, the weapons are uninspired and don't do much damage at all. Breaking apart an asteroid becomes an extremely monotonous task. Overall, crap gameplay.

Graphics: Well, they are 3d accelerated, textured asteroids. I think I recall seeing the asteroid texture in a 3dfx demo but I'm not sure. Quite frankly the best graphics are on the 'Loading...' and ship selection screens. The cockpit looks out of some Apogee shareware game that was released three years ago. There are some cool light-sourcing effects that occur when you fire your gun but they get quite erratic after a while. Sometimes when you fire your laser a green glow will reflect over the asteroid. Other times the glow will be blue. With the same weapon! To me that's a small detail that just makes it ugly. Explosions are ugly and chunky. The program just overlays several sprites in order to create an explosion. Needless to say it looks terrible. Oh yeah, the game runs slow on my PII/266 w/ 12 meg Voodoo2.

Sound: Well there are two sounds in this game: Laser fire and explosions. No matter what weapon you are firing it sounds the same. Missiles sound like lasers. Explosions are all the same. The music isn't bad actually except that its really scratchy.

Multiplayer: A big feature of this game. You can play with any type of connection pretty easily. The only problem is that muliplayer sucks because it is no fun, believe me I tried.

Overall: Don't bother picking this one up, even 3d Railroad Master is a better game. I give this game a large thumb down.

Graphics: 2 / 20
Sound: 3 / 15
Gameplay: 5 / 30
Fun Factor: 0 / 20
Multiplayer 1 / 5
Overall Impression: 3 / 10

Tested on: PII/266; 96mbs ram; Diamond Fire Gl 1000 Pro; Voodoo2 12 meg.