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Christmas has come and gone but now is the time to spend any Christmas cash you have on games. And this game might just be one that you find interesting. I don't know about you, but I'm a big fan of helicopter gunship games. Coala was totally amazing as far as I'm concerned, but to have two of these games released in such a short space of time, is excellent!

Back in the early days of my Super Nintendo, I spent much of my time flying helicopter missions across deserts and jungles in Desert Strike and its close relatives. Surely these games must go down as classics. Yes, they do!

Well, things have come a long way from those days and these helicopter gunship games have come on a bit too. There are a few corkers on the PC but I won't go on about that. Last issue saw us reviewing the rather good Coala. This was a fairly complicated game that involved some serious learning to fly. ZeeWolf 2 is far less complicated, especially if you want to use joystick/pad control instead of the much more complicated mouse control.

Anyway, there is a story behind the game so read on and see if you like it.

This game is not set in a standard war. This is all a bit futuristic involving corporate wars between huge companies who are fighting for something, power I guess, that's what most people fight about, oh and money!

Well, in this rather futuristic fight there is a past and a present. I have to admit to being rather unfamiliar with the original ZeeWolf 1 (I'm assuming there was one!) but there is, it seems, a story to the first game. Essentially it is a typical story of good old corporate battles. The baddies are Ecliptico "the company whose greed and aggression kicked the whole thing off" the first great corporate war, that is!

Thanks to the incredible battle helicopter ZeeWolf, the one you are to take charge of, Zenith Research won the first war. It seemed that all was to be alright. The environmental damage that this evil empire had created was slowly cleaned up. Ecliptico seemed to crumble as share prices crashed and corrupt deals were uncovered. However, it seems that all was not well!

Ecliptico were, in fact, not dead and buried. They were far from it. They secretly maintained contact with all the powerful people they could, and started to plan; their plan was staggeringly simple and extremely ambitious. They wanted to pull off a total global corporate raid!

So it seems that Zenith have rather a lot to cope with. As they are the only people with even the remotest chance of stopping the Ecliptico plot they have come under heavy attack. Very heavy attack. Their forces are stretched to breaking point and it won't be long before they can do nothing.

The helicopter ZeeWolf 2 is untested but they have no choice but to send it up against the Ecliptico forces. So are you going to have a crack?

This game has an awful lot going for it. At first, I really didn't think a lot of it. It seemed too simple... but my opinion was soon to change. To start off with, the screen seemed too simple graphically and the helicopter was hard to control especially when attacking something.

Well, soon enough I had mastered the art of controlling ZeeWolf and I was blasting my way through mission after mission. This was all too easy, surely? Oh dear! It seemed that I spoke too soon! Things soon start to get a little tougher.

The small tanks and troop carriers that you face in the first few levels prove to be easy to blast away. However, the rather tougher tanks and ground-to-air missiles that you end up facing are a great deal harder to destroy and will give you a bit of a problem.

There are even helicopters to fight against in air-to-air battles. But don't worry too much, you have some fairly serious air-to-air missiles to help you out.

There are a whole load of missions to take part in and you will find that there is a password system so that you don't have to keep on going back through every mission.

There are 32 missions. They tend to get increasingly hard the further you get into the game. The missions are divided up into phases. You have to destroy certain things, airlift others to safety, and rescue hostages. It is possible to refuel and rearm the helicopter but you are limited by how much cash you have and by how many supplies there are.

It is also possible during the game to take over a selection of vehicles including a tank, a torpedo boat, a VTOL fighter and a transport helicopter. This is a really, really neat touch!

This really is a great game. The controls are easy to handle and you will soon find yourself avoiding enemy fire and destroying enemy vehicles with ease, in the early levels at least.

There are a lot of challenges with the later levels being overrun with bad guys. The sound is really quite good with a wonderful intro tune that will put you in the mood for a good old fashioned gun battle. Tactics come into it too with limited fuel and ammunition and the ability to control other tanks, boats, planes and helicopters. Things don't stand still either.

The enemy forces are constantly on the move and you have to keep up with them. The game screen itself works very well with a sort of virtual reality style patchwork quilt as the ground.

The effect is actually rather pleasing. It's all rather like some kind of military simulator.

A1200: This A500 version runs much better on the old A1200. Very nice indeed.

CD32: No CD32 version I'm afraid, but hey, you've got Guardian, so who cares?