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Commodore Format
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Ikari Warriors (Elite)
Everybody's played a Commando style game at some point - they've run through a jungle massacring hundreds upon thousands of enemy soldiers, and they've had a lot of fun. Ikari Warriors is along almost exactly the same lines, but for a change, this one is interesting - you don't have an incredibly easy stroll through the woods and then get ambushed by 40,000 enemies, with only one bullet to spare.
What we have here is a version of the standard vertically-scrolling run, dodge and shoot affair, with enough extra to keep it sweet - there are larger gun turrets and pill boxes to take out with a handy grenade, helicopters to shoot down, rivers to swim, tanks to destroy - even the odd building to raze to the ground.
Then again, you'll find Chaos Road on the cover tape this month, and probably ask yourself why you're bothering reading the review of a very similar game. Wait, there is one very good reason, being that the enemies actually have brains this time round. That's right - when a soldier appears on screen, he won't just run in one direction and shoot you if you get in the way - the groups of them run on the side of the screen, kneel down and rifle you. Failing that, they'll be footsoldiers using that wonderful tactic of outnumbering the victim 400 to 1.
![Ikari Warriors](/ills_small/c64/elite/tapes/Ikari-Warriors-002.gif)
That's not all there is to this lovely little journey through the jungle, though - if you manage to find a tank lying around empty, you can put your Moss Side experience to good use and steal it, running over as many people as you like before the tank gets grenaded by the original owner, desperate to keep his insurance premiums down.
So it's a nice game in principle, but that isn't everything - how does it play? The answer is 'wonderfully'. The control system may get a little difficult to use at times, restricted by the fact that, though you can use either bullets or grenades, there's only one fire button and so the grenades fly when you hoid it down. Apart from that small flaw, there really isn't anything untoward about the gameplay, as it's just constant killing action. The fact that bumping into a soldier will kill you gets a bit much occasionally and the all-too-realistic 'one bullet and you die' is a bit too much to handle when you first start - this is not a game for romping straight through; this is a game for steadily improving on.
So we've got ourselves a relatively nice little Vietnam (or is it Korea?) game that, above all, is great fun to play. If it couldn't get any better, it just has - this is a two-player game, with both of the Ikari Warriors playing at the same time. The ability to shoot and kill each other is something I'd question, but it all adds to the fun, and the odd competitive game can be refreshing - especially when you're playing against Hutch.