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GAMES ROOM - When I first played MAGAX: Destroyer I hated it. Magax was hard to
control and kept gliding into those Ghosts. The fact that Hubrid Nox hovered over
his head didn't make things better. Then I noticed the high-score table. I realized
that the score was very low compared to how hard it was to get into other games
high score tables.
The key to get a good score is controlling Magax properly; this isn't as hard
as it looks on the first try. You don't choose the speed at which Magax moves,
you just point him in a direction and he will start accelerating in that direction.
Besides that you can make him move up, straight forward or down in this direction.
This might sound simple, but as anyone who has played the game knows, Magax
don't stop directly when you tell him to. In fact he continue to glide in the
direction he was moving, decreasing his speed slowly until he reaches zero and
start to move in the other direction.
Because of this it's important not to let Magax gain too much speed as this
will resulting in him being hard to control and he will fly into bunches of
ghosts. The problem with breaking (turn Magax in the opposite direction he is
facing) is that you turn his back in the direction he is flying. Magax weapon
is his energy ray, which he can fire in a straight-line in front of him. Thus
when you fly towards a ghost and realize that you have to much speed, you turn
Magax the other way and he will start breaking, but he won't be able to blast
the ghost as long as he has his back turned.
The key to all this is, as I mentioned earlier in the text, not to let Magax
gain too much speed. Move s-l-o-w-l-y. You can't control the speed at which
Magax accelerate, however you can choose the direction he accelerates in. Keep
switching directions and let him fly a little longer in the direction you want
him to move in. By doing this you will move slowly, remember slowly, in a direction.
While your doing this you can adjust the height at which Magax is flying by
pressing either up or down arrow depending where you want to move, keep switching
between moving left and right.
That wasn't so hard, eh? With some practise you will be able to move Magax
without problem and you might even start to like the way he moves. That was
the steering part, now to the objective of the game: blast ghosts.
This is, when you have learned the controls properly, a simple doing. Move
Magax slowly in a direction until you spot a ghost. Make sure Magax is in level
with the ghost and turn him towards it. Hit space to fire your energy ray, blasting
that creature into oblivion, then turn and break. Repeat this over and over
again until all the ghosts on the level is gone. Never fly past a ghost if you
can avoid it. Take it slow, remember?
There are some more details about ghosts that you need to know in order to
succeed. There are three different types of ghosts. JubJubs, Aishas, and Chias.
Ghost JubJubs:
Your best friend! These little fellows split into three new small JubJubs when
you blast them. Now why is this so good you may ask? The answer to that question
is that for every hit you receive 5 points, regardless of what type of ghost
it is. So for a Big JubJub you will get first 5 points for the first hit and
then 5 points each for the small ones that pop out totally 20 points. The best
way to get rid of these JubJubs is to first fire an energy ray aiming for the
JubJubs feet. Then fire a second ray directly after to blast all the three small
ones. Another good thing with these fellows is that the energy ray easily blasts
them; allowing you to blast several of them in one shot.
Ghost Aishas:
Nothing special really, 5 points for every hit, also easy to blast with the
ray.
Ghost Chias:
Your worst enemy! (Apart from Hubrid Nox). These things shoot blasts of goo
at you and are hard to shoot. Example: If you fire your energy ray at a Chia
and a JubJub is hovering behind it, chances are you are only going to hit the
JubJub. Be very careful around these, as they are very unreliable. Sometimes
they don't fire any blasts of go at all and sometimes they fire up to three
in a second. What you should do when fighting against these ghosts is to make
sure that you are always moving either up or down, don't go in a straight line
towards them. This is because they aim their blast at the point where Magax
is hovering at the time the blast is fired. Therefore most of the shots will
miss you if you move up or down. Don't panic if several blasts is fired at you
simultaneously, just take it easy, move up and down and blast the Chias one
by one. You get 5 points for every hit.
Other than the ghost, there are some green skulls floating around in each
level. Collect those to get health; one skull gives as much health as you loose
when hitting a ghost. There are between 0 and 2 skulls on each level. If you
have full health, you might want to save them till the end of the level and
then return to collect them. Be warned that sometimes they disappear, though.
Now that's it! Not so hard, huh?
Well you didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you? Let me present
to you, a most fearful villain: Hubrid Nox. When you are busy flying around
blasting ghost Hubrid will come to visit you on his little cloud. He will stay
on the screen for a while and then do one of three things before he leaves and
come back again a while later. How often he pays a visit is random but the frequency
increases as you come to the higher levels. The three things Hubrid will do
is the following: Enlarge ghosts: This is the best thing that can happen, the
ghosts grow in size becoming bigger and easier for you to hit (and also to crash
into but that shouldn't happen because you go slow right?). Burn: Hubrid sets
fire to Magax making him burn for a while loosing half the health loosed when
hitting a ghost. This does not affect Magax movement ability. Freeze: Freezes
Magax for a short period of time. He will continue moving in the direction he
was facing. All you can do is hope that you wont hit any ghosts during this
time. There isn't really anything you can do about these three things, so just
ignore Hubrid. Sometimes he can be on the screen several minutes without anything
happening and other times you wont even have time to notice him before he does
something.
Lastly, there is one more thing that will stop you from getting that high-score.
This is a really unfair and annoying bug, which occurs at the higher levels.
If you look at the top of the game window you might notice a little overhead
map with red dots on them. I usually ignore this map most of the time because
it updates to slowly to be of any value. What happens is that at some point
when you blast a ghost, it remains on the overhead map fixed at the spot where
it was destroyed. When you have destroyed all the ghosts on the level this one
will remain on the map and the next level will not load. In other words Game
over man, game over. You can still send your score however, to suicide just
hold down space to fire energy rays until your power meter reaches zero. After
this you will loose health for every ray you fire and will eventually die. I
haven't found a way to avoid the bug completely and its very random at which
point it occurs. I usually play on Medium quality to make the game run faster
and avoid delays. Another thing one can do to lover the risk of the game crashing
is in the beginning of all levels. Look at the map when the level start, you
will see several red dots appear one after the other. Wait until all the red
dots have appeared before firing the ray. Just fly around and try to avoid the
ghosts spawning around you.
That's about everything you need to know in order to play the game successfully.
Of course this is my own idea of how the game should be played and I can't guarantee
that it will work for you. I hope that this will help some people get some tips
on how to play, however. Now go out there and get those ghosts!
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