Product ReviewsEarth Dies Screaming (Atari 2600, 1983)

A great name for a no-so-great game.

Your job - according to the manual, at least - is to defend the Earth from the "diabolical Trillians". It plays pretty much like the vector arcade game "Star Wars", but since it looks, plays, and sounds so different, it feels more fresh than it really is.

This 2600 game should *not* be confused with the Black And White movie of the same name, even though the game is released by 20th Century Fox. But you know something's wrong as soon as you look at the cartridge; the end label has copyright names, year, programming and video credit ... everything *except* the game's name on it. Don't these meatheads know what's supposed to be on the end label of a video game cartridge? I guess not.

Well, you start up the game, and the sound, graphics, and control all seem to work fine. The more aliens that get by your defenses, the closer the game comes to an end. Outsmarting the aliens isn't hard, since the AI is 100% non-existent. But *then* you fire a shot at the enemy, and *that's* when you realize how broken this game truly is. The shots you fire don't move towards the area that you fired, but in whatever direction your ship is moving around. The manual claims that your shots lock onto the targets, but don't you believe a word of that. All you can do is jiggle around the cannon's sightings, and hope that your shots magically land onto the targets you're trying to hit.

The gameplay - as you'd expect - *does* create some suspense, and even generates a feeling of urgency, especially since the game's framerate is very good. As more and more of the Earth is taken over by the aliens, and fewer aliens can slip by you before the game ends, "Screaming" does everything it should perfectly in this regard. But since all the gameplay relies on jiggling the joystick back and forth just right, you're ready to move on after about half an hour. You'd never believe that this same game company also did the vastly superior "Bank Heist". I say - if you want a good product with the word "scream" in the title - get a Harlan Ellison collection.Read full review...