
Grave Yardage
Activision 1989
Genre: Sport, Action
Themes: Misc. Fantasy / Horror / Fighting / Team Sports
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: C64
Rating: ?
Mr Creosote:
2/6
Overall:
2/6

Review by Mr Creosote (published April 25th, 2009, last updated March 6th, 
2010):

American Football with monsters - that's Grave Yardage. It adds elves, ghouls 
and wizards into the mix, and all of them are after an eyeball with legs - the 
stand-in for a ball. Points are scored the usual way: by carrying the ball all 
across the field. Or... by beating up the enemy players.

And that it basically where the real fun begins. Some types of players might be 
fast and agile, but they drop dead after one or two axe blows. Or the other way 
around. Some are smart, some stupid. Some deliver fatal blows, some can take 
those. Every time the game is interrupted by some event, you have the choice to 
change your team's lineup. You can hand-pick four players from your pool or just 
take one of the pre-made selections, optimized for strength or stamina for 
example.

For more variation, there are a lot of different fields to play on (adding such 
features as mines into the game), different teams and different 'playbooks' 
containing team maneuvers you can (try to) carry out. All of them are editable.

Good concept, but the game suffers from a few things. First of all, the 
graphics, while generally adaequate, could make the different players more 
distinct. In the chaos which always occurs almost immediately, it's hard to tell 
them apart. Staying on the topic of graphics, the game doesn't scroll the field 
smoothly, but only at two pre-defined points. That means you'll sometimes be in 
a fight directly at the border of the screen, making things even harder. Even 
worse: The game always shows the part of the field which the ball is in, and it 
might happen that the real action is taking place off-screen (read: you're 
supposed to fight without seeing it).

Gameplay-wise, just like real Americal Football, the flow of the game is 
interrupted too often. Since players are beaten down fairly quickly and since 
there are only four of them, the game seems to be stopped every few seconds. Why 
don't the players just get up again some seconds after being knocked out? That 
way, the flow of the game wouldn't be interrupted. Instead, you have to stand 
quite a bit of loading time, then select the next maneuver, only to have one 
team knocked out again quickly. Unfortunately, the loading times exceed the 
effective game time.

Grave Yardage is still worth a serious try. Its humourous and anarchic edge 
certainly makes it a sympathetic game, even if the gameplay could have been 
balanced a little better.
