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Four months after Robocop's brush with psychotic crim, Clarence Boddicker, Old Detroit's police force are still out on strike and the city is on the brink of anarchy, not to mention bankruptcy. With Boddicket and the majority of the police force out of the way, the city's drugs market has been taken over by another psycho named Cain who is frying junkies' brains with a super-addictive designer drug called Nuke.

Robo, being the hardest cop on the Force (with the strike on, he's the only cop on the Force) takes it upon himself to shut down the Nuke production lines and clap Cain in irons as well. But the investigation is complicated by the re-emergence of Robo's human feelings, and the production of a new Robocop - an emotionless supercyborg which is rather more ruthless in its law enforement methods...

Not surprisingly, you take control of the chromium copper himself, and bringing justice to the troubled streets of Old Detroit is all down to your own joystick skills. Crime is everywhere, so keep your autopistol cocked and you should be able to stay out of trouble (or something).

The game starts with Robocop infiltrating Cain's Nuke production line at the River Rouge Sludge Plant. Though he's armed with his Auto-9 pistol, his main problem on this level is dodging between and jumping over the multitude of traps which Cain's lackies have installed to protect their investment.

Some of Cain's men who would rather give themselves up than suffer Robo-wrath, are to be found quivering on the platforms, just waiting to be busted for bonus points.

In the first puzzle sequence, Robo has to hunt through his circuits and destroy the microchips inhibiting his memories of his former self, Alex Murphy. As the cursor travels around the circuit board, it destroys anything it touches, including the circuit board, so you have to work out how to touch each of the small chips without having to double back on your trail. As each chip disappears, the image of Murphy reforms in the micro-screen at top-right.

With all this heavy combat, Robo often finds his targeting system needs recalibrating, so he is sent to the police shooting range. Targets pop up all over the screen, and Robo has to blast as many as he can before they disappear. Watch out for the law-abiding citizens though as each one shot reduces Robo's score when the timer runs down!

Another puzzle sequence which plays exactly the same as the first one, but this time around, Robo has to reconstitute his memories of Alex Murphy's wide. Looks like this board is almost complete!

After a nasty accident with a motorcycle, Cain is killed, but his brain has been installed in OCP's new Robocop 2 unit. To make things even worse, its brain is smashed out of its, er, brain with Nuke, so the machine goes into a real psycho strop. In this final level, Robo has to search the Civic Centrum Building for Robocop 2 then deactivate it, while leaping over spikes, electric security beams and nasty little robots.

The first thing that struck me about Robocop 2 was the very nice graphics - it makes really good use of the GX4000's colour capabilities. The other plus point is that because the whole game is on cartridge, the lack of a long-winded tape multiload makes it much easier to enjoy it.

The actual structure of the game isn't too far removed from that of the original Robocop game, insofar as it mixes action sections with puzzle games and a target shoot-out, and the formula works almost as well as it did before.

The only problem I actually had with with the Amstrad joypad, which made getting those essential diagonals a little tricky. On the whole though, this is a pretty good movie licence which is sure to be a big hit with the new breed of software-starved Amstrad GX4000 owners.