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Poor old Darkman, he's been in the wars, hasn't he? There he was, just minding his own business and inventing artificial skin in his lab, when suddenly along come two nasty pieces of work like Strack and Durant. They burn his face off with acid, blow him up, cause him so much pain that his nervous system is destroyed, and then kidnap his wife. As you can imagine, Darkman is a little teed off, and immediately plans his revenge. Being a bit strapped for cash, our hero decides to steal some of Strack's money to finance the evil gangster's downfall. So, in horizontally scrolling Level 1, you must punch and kick your way through numerous drug barons, ninjas and their dogs to steal illicit drug money.

A subgame preceding Levels 2, 4 and 6, involves aiming a cursor to take photos of a villain. This allows you to create a lookalike, artificial skin mask to give you a brief disguise in the following section.

The second level sees you trapped in a factory with Durant and his cronies. You must fight your way onto the roof, avoiding haywire machines and vicious gangsters.

At last you make it to the rooftops, and leap from building to building in Level 3, in order to get to your lab and destroy it. But wouldn't you know it? Durant turns up in a helicopter with a grenade launcher just to make things difficult.

Level 4, and you have to prime a set of gas cylinders in your lab, then get out again before they detonate! Just as your lab explodes, you manage to grab hold of a rope ladder mysteriously dangling in front of you.

Only when you're airborne do you realise that it was attached to Durant's copter. The blaggard swings you into the rush-hour traffic, which you must skilfully avoid on Level 5. Following this, there is an automatic sequence in which you tie the rope ladder onto an oil tanker, signing Durant's death warrant. Revenge is sweet.

Level 6, finally, and you turn your attention to the evil mastermind Strack. Fight your way through horders of henchmen in an unfinished skyscraper and you get the satisfaction of throwing the man responsible for your disfigurement off the top.

So goes the storyline, and thus goes the game. The graphics are very colourful, but not too well drawn or detailed. They are also quite blocky, and even the digitized picture in the photo section isn't *that* good.

The sound is nothing special either, with a little tune at the start, and it sounds like you've got boxing gloves on when you hit someone. Even the intro screen is distinctly average, with no flashy still graphics or colourful scrolly messages.

The gameplay really lets Darkman down though, being so repetitive and boring on the first level. All you do is walk along and attack people using a maximum of two moves and always losing some energy. Level 2 is just as bad, with more of the same interspersed with frustrating platform leaping - miss a platform and you invariably end up not far off from where you first started. Later levels are more imaginative and entertaining, but Darkman is still a very average game.

Darkman isn't a great game, but it has its moments. The crude first level is very disappointing, but things do get better with the combination of simple combat and platform jumping proving quite playable, especially on Level 4, where you have to first set the bomb and then return the way you came before it explodes.

Rooftop and helicopter levels contribute variety, while the photo subgame is a novel idea. On the bad side, the tiniest of mistakes can drain most of your energy, making your task impossible. Even with continue-plays this proves frustrating with the tape multi-load.

Presentation 62%
Text intro for each multi-loaded level, small mono pics on completing tasks in levels. Three continue-plays.

Graphics 69%
Ill-defined enemy sprites on colourful, attractive backdrops.

Sound 52%
Unmemorable title tune, limited FX.

Hookability 66%
Unexciting first level, but improves thereafter.

Lastability 69%
Fairly tough, frustrating on tape, but camera and helicopter scenes have an original feel.

Overall 67%