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Revenge - A once proud man now lives a nightmare. Revenge - The explosion. They may have removed his face, but they couldn't remove his anger. Revenge - Durant. Strack. These are the men of greed. They have taken his manhood, they have even taken his beloved Julie. Now it is Darkman who will take - the lives of Durant, Strack, and all who follow them. The time for mercy has passed. Now is the time for Darkman. The time for revenge.

In short, Peyton Westlake is having a bad day. He woke up with a complexion like T1000, and now someone's stolen his girlfriend. Don't worry - it's not a "rescue the helpless bimbo" thang; she just thinks he's dead, that's all. He's had an acid facial, and not surprisingly, is a little riled by now. I feel a killing spree coming on...

Well, I would go on a bandaged mass murder special were it not for the fact that I've got to rewind to the start of side two and wait. And wait. And wait. But inevitably, the first level grinds into memory, and the curtains rise, Darkman standing centre stage. Enter blokes on either side, closing in and firing on Peyton. So you control the Darkster and rip their faces off, or something equally gruesome like that. You see, when you polish off yet another meaningless bad guy's life, they don't just vaporize. The Darkmeister punches them off their feet, until they slowly collapse to the floor. What fun!

If you've ever seen the film, you'll realise just how badly plotted this game is. Just about the only "man in trenchcoat putting his fist through bad guy's face" sequences happen at the very end of the film, and don't last very long at that.

What we have seen here is the interpretation of a film that could have been made into a much more fun, challenging, varied and entertaining time - they managed it with Terminator 2. We could have had puzzle sub games based on Peyton's experiments, the famous synapse sequence, a static screen beat-'em-up for the opening plot sequence (in which Peyton gets frazzled), and as a grand finale, have that scrolling part, but with a few bullets spraying down, the odd ladder, and a few walkways. This would get an absolutely wonderful review from me, and I'd probably feel suitably moved to give it a score somewhere in the nineties.

Sadly, the programmers didn't feel compelled to write anything other than a scrolling beat-'em-up, with very little else from the film. They did attempt to throw something together in the way of photographing people to imitate them, but if you even manage to find out how to use it, it'll be a small miracle. There are different stages, loosely based on the various scenes in the film - very loosely. You see, when you blow up the lab, there's a small army of bad guys to get past (scrolling beat-'em-up section), when you climb to the roof top, there's a small army of bad guys to waste (scrolling beat-'em-up section), and when you're jumping around roofs to avoid the helicopter, there's the evil henchmen trying to stop you (scrolling beat-'em-up section). What more can I say? It's a scrolling beat-'em-up game.

Look, this is getting to be a real problem - when AA is planned we set aside one page for each re-release, and two pages for something like Prehistorik II. In reviews like this, though, the system falls down. Planning a page for this review was okay, but we couldn't foresee Darkman being so mind-numbingly shallow that filling a page would be damned near impossible.

Much as I hate to, I suppose I'd better treat Darkman as a normal game arriving for review, and do a little round up of its good points. There's no sprite flicker, and it's good fun killing people for about the first five minutes until the novelty completely wears off. There. With a bit of luck, that should just about fill the page.

It's all very well having a game based on a film, but Darkman didn't really make much of an impression in the cinemas, did it? In case you haven't seen it, it's about a bloke (Peyton Westlake) who's working on a new workable synthetic skin. Bad guys break into the lab and smash it up, giving him an acid bath and napalm enema while they're about it. Peyton then completes the new skin, rebuilds himself, and kills all the bad guys.

Roll ending credits.

Graphics 70%
Not the best in the world, but not quite as much of a chunderama as Skull And Crossbones.

Sonics 50%
The odd punching noise, but nothing special, or even vaguely interesting.

Grab Factor 80%
It's fun to punch the bad guys' lights out for a while.

Staying Power 40%
Oh dear.

Overall 50%
It's not a difficult decision to make. You might like it, but then I'd lay money that you won't.