If I was to start this review by telling you this game was overpriced by at least £30, would you think I was being overly negative? If not, then just take my word for it and talk of it no more. If, however, you want some reasons, here are ten to be going on with.
The animation is the worst I have ever seen on a full-price Amiga game. Yes, even worse than Quest For Glory II. Your hero (he certainly isn't mine) wibbles around as if he was on elastic, his head perpetually bobbing like a nodding dog in the back of a particularly shaky Lada.
Enemies appear at random, and disappear if you walk off the screen and then back on again.
The colour scheme is garish and sickly.
The action is appallingly slow.
Fighting with the baddies is laughably imprecise - it's a case of wiggle the joystick at random and hope for the best.
The game design is incredibly lazy. Many of the dangers are random, and some of them (like the grenades thrown from unseen hands off-screen that home-in on your position) are unavoidable. Invisible walls make an unwelcome appearance and the screen layout is illogical too - you can walk right for 30 screens, then walk left for one screen and be back where you started.
The instructions are useless. (I still haven't managed to work out how to fire the fun you find on Level One.)
The screens flick rather than scroll, but unbelievably there's still a major pause every time you move from one to another. Was this game written in Basic or what?
The on-screen text messages are badly-translated, unfunny, smug and generally abusive.
Section Two is almost totally unfathomable. (It's a sort of flight sim thing - the 3D is alright, but as a game it's downright useless!)
Convinced yet?! If you're not, I can only imagine that you're either the best friend or the grandmother of whoever had the nerve to put this lump of unforgivably hideous rot on the market. The only point I can think of in Cougar Force's favour is that the hero does mildly amusing things if you leave the controls alone for a while. This is good, because if you buy this game, you're going to want to leave the controls alone for a very very long time indeed.
Every month I think I've seen the worst full-price game ever, and every month I'm wrong. This is too crap for words, but luckily not too crap for a number, and that number is...