Chaos Engine CD
Developer: The Bitmap Brothers
Publisher: Renegade
Release: Out Now
Price: £4.99

Introduction
The Chaos Engine is a top-down-and-from-the-side-a-bit viewed shoot'em up game in which you play as one of six mercenaries trying to stop the machine of the title from bringing chaos to the world. The game has obviously been designed with two players in mind as even in one player mode there is a computer-controlled friendly bloke helping you out.

The game is set over four worlds with a total of 16 levels, which include plenty of monsters to shoot, key-finding puzzles to solve and secret passageways to find. Around the levels you can collect food for health, various special powers to increase your chances, and money that can be used to buy upgrades and lives for your character in the shop.

What's good about it?

• The levels are superbly designed, as is the game as a whole, which makes it very enjoyable to play.
• The difficulty level is very nearly spot on. This game will last you a very long time without being too frustrating (but see below).
• The two player mode is excellent fun. Surely one of the best games ever for cooperative two player gaming.
• It has beautifully drawn graphics and a lovely intro animation.
• The music is very atmospheric and there is good use of sound effects.

What's bad about it?

• It may be too hard for some people.
• When played from CD on our A1200 it stops mid-game at certain points on the map to load music, which can be annoying if you move back and forth between areas a lot.
• Both characters have to remain on screen at once, so you can't go off in separate directions.

Conclusion
Without a doubt one of the Amiga's best ever shoot'em up games. If you've got a friend to play it with then you'll have great fun, but it's a superb one player game too. Just don't play it if you get frustrated with hard games.

Requires: AGA, CD-ROM

Dune II: Battle for Arrakis
Developer: Westwood Studios
Publisher: Virgin Games
Release: Out Now
Price: £12.99

Introduction
Based on the film Dune (which was itself based on the novels by Frank Herbert), the game centres around a desert-covered planet called Arrakis. The planet is home to a miracle spice that allows the fabric of space to be warped for interstellar travel and, if consumed regularly, can prolong human life. The Emperor Frederick IV has come up with a cunning plan to harvest the spice rapidly, which involves three houses battling for control of the planet. You take command of one of these houses, constructing various buildings and factories, and putting together armies of infantry and vehicles so that you can defeat the other houses and claim Arrakis for yourself. Dune II is the original real-time strategy game.

What's good about it?

• It has a learning curve that works really well.
• The level designs and gameplay go together wonderfully to make the game very enjoyable to play.
• The storyline is very involving and complete, and it's very suitable for this type of game.
• The graphics are functional and there are nice hand-drawn animations.

What's bad about it?

• The graphics are looking quite dated now.
• Being the original, it lacks a lot of the features we've come to expect from real-time strategy games released since. For example, you can't right-click to carry out actions quickly, you have to click on the icons first, and you can only perform actions on one unit at a time.

Conclusion
Dune II used to be a classic game, which came highly recommended, but now it just can't compete with Command & Conquer and all its clones because it lacks the features that have, over the years, been added to games of this type. The low-resolution graphics don't help matters, although you'll get used to them after a while, but if you give the game a chance and let yourself get into it, you'll get used to the old-style way of doing things as well.

If you've become used to playing more modern Command & Conquer style games, then you'll quite possibly just get annoyed with this. On the other hand, if you haven't played the more modern versions or have enough patience to live with the game's slower control methods, then you'll be able to get a lot of enjoyment out of the title. And if you do get into Dune II then you'll stick with it to the end because of the way it slowly increases the difficulty, which lets you get just that little bit further each time.

Requires: 1MB (1.5MB for Hard disk)

Legends
Developer: Manyk
Publisher: Guildhall Leisure Services
Release: Out Now
Price: £4.99

Introduction
Aliens have placed the world in peril by travelling back in time and dropping modern weapons on ancient civilisations enabling the more dubious humans to rule the world! The safety of the earth rests in the hands of a time-travelling professor and you, his young assistant. By possessing the bodies of natives from each of the four time zones you must perform many specific tasks to defeat the evil that the aliens have created. The Zelda style gameplay of Legends has you wandering around each of the time periods shooting baddies and collecting items to use in specific locations for solving the puzzles you are faced with. Each world also has subgames and bosses to defeat, and a password is given before you start a new time period to allow you to restart from that point. The large number of nasties that populate the levels will test your skills of evasion as much as shooting as they come at you from all angles.

What's good about it?

• The levels are well designed and have plenty of puzzles that take just the right amount of time to solve.
• There are a large range of varied baddies with differing attack modes to deal with, and the bosses are very well designed.
• The gameplay as a whole is tuned just about right and makes for a very enjoyable game.
• The graphics are quite nicely drawn and it all moves very smoothly.
• Shooting one of the baddies drops some health for you to pick up.

What's bad about it?

• There are too many baddies populating the levels, which all respawn, making it easy to get swamped by several of them and lose all of your energy in just a few seconds.
• The only way you can save your progress is by using the passwords at the beginning of each of the four time periods.

Conclusion
Although Legends is well designed and therefore enjoyable to play, it can get quite frustrating when you're being chased by several baddies from different directions. This is especially the case with the flying ones, which are not only harder to hit but also remove more health, which seems quite unfair even if they do give you more health if you do manage to hit them enough times. This problem wouldn't be so bad if you could save your progress more often. There are continue flags dotted around the levels, which you can select to restart from when you lose a life, but these would have been much better used to actually save the game or give you a password.

Apart from these annoying flaws, though, the game is very well put together and you can steadily progress through it if you're patient (or skilled) enough to get by the problems.

Requires: AGA

Liberation: Captive II
Developer: Tony Crowther and Ross Goodley
Publisher: Mindscape International
Release: Out Now
Price: £19.99

Introduction
It is the 29th Century and Bio-corp's law enforcement droids are malfunctioning and killing people for no reason. The corporation are trying to cover up the problem by framing innocent people for the killings and holding them captive without trial or any hope of escape. You have been called upon to remotely operate four droids to use in a rescue operation. You must talk to the cities' inhabitants to gain clues as to the whereabouts of the captives and track them down so they can be freed. You can trade with people to get hold of better weapons and equipment, use computers to find people's addresses, travel quickly through the cities using taxis and make good use of your weapons to end (or start) a fight.

What's good about it?

• The amount of effort that's gone into making this game is incredible, from the brilliant intro, death sequence and outro animations, to the whole game itself, which is packed with well thought out features and details.
• Although the graphics engine is based on the usual Dungeons and Dragons role playing style, it has been tarted up like nobody's business, and is full of variety if you choose to install the full set of textures.
• The game is huge, containing hundreds of people, items and buildings, which certainly helps the objective of the game (to track down a particular person) to work really well. People dream of games like this.
• You'll come back to play this game over and over again to see if you can get any further. And you can save it wherever you want.
• You can gradually find more and more money, allowing you to buy bigger and better weapons, which keeps the game changing.

What's bad about it?

• You have absolutely no chance in hell of completing this game. It redefines the word immense. But this could also be considered a good point...
• Playing the game for long periods of time it can get frustrating when you can't find any clues, and the gameplay can get a bit repetitive when you're not doing very well.

Conclusion
This is a very original game, which has had an incredible amount of thought and effort put into it, resulting in one of the best games I have ever played. It is quite a strange game, being so different to anything else, which has an equally strange way of getting you hooked. Although it doesn't have a two player mode, I've been playing the game in competition with one of my friends by seeing who can find the next captive first. When we find one we tell the other person the address where the captive is being held so they can find it and we both move on to the next mission. Playing it like this, and seeing who can get the best weapons, has had us playing it much more than any game on any platform. But this really is an amazing game however you play it.

Requires: 1.3MB

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