Who Dares Wins II

Alligata
£7.95

It was with great anticipation and a jingoistic spark of glee in my eye that I unwrapped and load Who Dares Wins II. I'm a sadistic devil-may-care mercenary at heart, so the thought of blasting my way through the slavering hordes of the Armies Of Death on a suicide mission filled me with warped joy.

Oh dear! What happened? Was I gripped? Was I drowned in cold sweat? Was I in fear for my life? in the words of Big John Wayne (or even small Lewis Collins), 'The Hell I Was!'

Here was have a conversion of a game designed for another computer, and not a tewwibly tewwific one at that. The sprites are flickery, the controls respond with the urgency and vigour of a sloth doing his tax return. In short, I was bored. It was far easier to run through the enemy onto the next screen than to ratty-tat them with my pixel-spitting machine gun. Every now and then I'd lob all my grenades by accident, due to the fact that the lobbing control is the same key as the trigger of my shooting iron. Frustrating, eh?

How is it that a game like Rambo can be quite well put together, and yet this has all the hallmarks of haste and compromise. Sure, it plays okay, but it looks naff. How can I possibly be gripped and sent on flights of blood-letting fancy if the mean and dangerous character I'm controlling looks like a wind-up soldier?

The joystick control seems to be non-existant - none of my interfaces would work with the game.

So, what can I say after this torrent of criticism, except perhaps suggest a new title for the game. Who Dares Yawns?