A View To A Kill (C64) - A Playguide and Review - by Lemon64.com

A View To A Kill was the first 007 title to be released by Domark, published in 1985. It features 3 different levels, in a multi-format environment, with different modes of gameplay. I never understood this in the day, so lets try to make sense of it.

Production Notes:
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Captured: 7th-8th October 2019
Narrated: 8th Oct 2019
Edited: 8th Oct 2019 - 10th January 2020.

As mentioned in the 007 special episode, I never owned this, but I remember looking at the box and wondering if it was going to be good. The 007 logo was inviting, and so was the cover. I knew it would feature music by one of my favourite bands - Duran Duran - so what is there not to love?

The graphics for one thing. I had a game called Grand Larceny back in the day, and the graphics on the box reminded me of that. I still have the irreversible mental scares from Grand Larceny, so I wasnt keen to try it in case it turned out to be a similar child-scarring experience. Returning to this recently, I wondered how you are supposed to find Mayday on the first level. This lead me to play it and try to actually understand it, with the results here.

I had one quick warmup go, where I found Mayday and discovered about using bullets to shoot through doors. Then I reset the game and tried again. As you can imagine, Mayday didnt want to stop at the location when I had the camera rolling, so I had to reset the game again and try for a better run. I got as far as I could with level 2 but eventually got frustrated. I wonder if you can put out the flames, as the one time I tried it, the game crashed. The next day I tried to learn level 3. It took all day, but eventually I learned how to get around the map, or at least enough to go for a completion run. I also discovered (quite a few times) that its possible to sink in to the level if you arnt careful, and this writes the game off. I used this trick (first time, without rehearsing) in the footage to try to get the winch handle, but was rushing to reach it, and ended up forgetting my formula of moves to perform the actions, and went in the wrong direction.

Im sure if you get the handle first, its possible to have time to get the rest. But having looked around, I didnt know the final combination code to deactivate the bomb. Perhaps those who know this game can write in to help me? At least I found some maps for the game in the World of Spectrum web site, and made a map showing the details of level 3. On the Amstrad and ZX versions of the game, the handle is on the opposite side of this area, and very easy to collect. Maybe this was placed in the wrong place on release? If so, a simple POKE would be needed to move it back and fix this game.

In general I think it is far less torture than Grand Larceny, but I didnt find much enjoyment from it. The first level needs a lot of waiting around. The second level needs mapping perfectly, and knowing where to use everything. The third level is good but also broken. So I'd give this a 3 out of 10. The average score in magazines and reviews combined was 4 out of 10, but time has not been kind to this game, either sonically, graphically, or gameplay wise.

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