Robocop 2

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Nuke, the newly designed drug hits the streets of Detroit and Robocop must put an end to this. The best way to do it is to raid all the safe-houses and factories that produce and supply the market with Nukes and shoot everyone except of their bosses in charge. Your orders are to arrest those guys alive! Additionally, you must destroy any Nuke found in your way. Robocop is called to navigate through a set of platform environments killing, arresting and collecting drugs. You can arrest gangsters by punching them until they fall down and you can use your almighty 1000-bullets automatic pistol to take down the rest of the villains. You should arrest enough people otherwise the gameplay will change in a first person shooter perspective (!). Apart from the attacking villains or the snipers popping out from windows, Robocop must watch for deadly gaps or water pits which will instantly terminate him. Most of the times, your desperate attempts to safely maneuver "Robo" to the next platform, will eventually crush him down. In the "frustration" section, there are very hard bosses, as well as some ability-testing levels. The overall gameplay is very tough and Robocop's awkward inertia makes him almost uncontrollable, especially when he lands or performs a jump just before or after a deadly gap. He seems to “slide” a lot and often plummets over the edge of a platform leading to certain death. Smooth and precise movement is required and it takes some time to master the awkward controls that sometimes respond in a very slow manner. Although the game is hard to play, it’s also pretty addictive and there are plenty of neat touches to keep you in, plus some loads of secret screens to discover.

GRAPHICS / GAMEPLAY
In terms of graphics, the ST version differs a lot compared to the Amiga and looks closer to the Amstrad CPC version, but of course with better graphics. The ST could definitely do better and it seems that Special FX did not take advantage of the hardware's capabilities, while they made a coin-op style game for the Amiga, with large graphics and stereo sound. The in-game designs are colorful (but limited to 16 colors on screen), quite detailed, with so much going on. There are moving saws, electrical discharges, barrels rolling and spikes slamming down all over the place, all well drawn and smoothly animated. The ST version's sound is good enough, offering RoboCop chip sound FX along with several RoboCop tunes in each stage.