Previous Next

In the latest of a long line of beat-'em-ups, you are the Human Killing Machine (HKM to your friends) and the idea is to travel to five different countries beating up ten of your enemies en route. Nothing new there.

Your grudge journey begins in Russia where you face Igor the fearless and his rabid dog Shepski. Successfully mutilate these two and you move onto Amsterdam. HKM is no ladies' man as he proves by beating the living daylights out of Maria and Helga. Next is Barcelona where you stop off to beat up Miguel the kinky toreador (complete with whip) and Brutus the bull. Hans is the first opponent in Germany; he is followed by Franz, the waiter, who throws bottles at you until you convince him that you are not a lager lout (a swift kick in the head usually suffices). Last stop is Beirut where you face Sagan and Merkeva who try to kill you off.

Just reading through the storyline, you would think that it's going to be Street Fighter with different opponents. How wrong you would be. Street Fighter had nice graphics. HKM doesn't. Street Fighter was playable. HKM isn't. In fact everything that made Street Fighter playable is missing from HKM.

Each country has a different backdrop, temples in Moscow, a tank in Beirut (no buildings left I suppose), that sort of thing. Most of the backdrops are blocky and suffer from colour clashes but at least they are better than the sprites. Both your character and all opponents are very small and poorly defined. Animation doesn't enhance them either, the fighters don't walk, they gracefully glide towards each other trying, as they do so, to execute jerky moves.

There are no sound effects but there are a couple of nice pieces of music to amuse your ears with. Gameplay is very poor, all you have to do is find a move that your opponent is susceptible to and use it until he is knocked down. Control is easy enough with sensible joystick movements.

Due to the ease of HKM it won't last long, add this to the poor graphics and awful gameplay, and what you have is a game that is only marginally more enjoyable than a kick in the head.

The graphics are much better on the Amiga version, including detailed backdrops and large opponents to beat up. The animation, however, lets it down - it's the same standard as the C64 version.

Gameplay is just a little better due to the very slightly increased difficulty, but even at budget price I'd still give it a miss.