Amiga

007: Licence to Kill

A nice plastic box but the free poster is titchy. The disk accessing between goes is annoying. Nicely detailed graphics, but not impressive for the Amiga. Slightly flat intro tune, adequate sound effects but no in-game music. A relatively easy first level draws you into the game. Six different levels, but once completed there is little incentive to play again. An excellent movie souvenir and a good game too.

Domark seem to have fought shy of adding their own creative input. Witness the final sequence, where you pilot a crop-duster plane over a convoy of trucks. The skills required are identical to those for the previous aerial stunts. Licence to Kill is a tough game but it does lack variety. Which brings me to the final point. Licence to Kill is OK, but it is a game that rests on the laurels of its big name attraction. Pretty to look at, it has a high energy Bond-style soundtrack interspersed by acres of noisy playing time with machine gun fire. Licence to Kill is worth it if you want an average game and you like the film; otherwise I would say that this is pretty standard fare. No Oscars for this licence, I am afraid.

It is easy to say that with Domark’s monopoly on the Bond series, it does not so much have a licence to kill but a licence to make a killing. To be fair, Domark now seem to be relying not so much on hype but more on decent coding to sell its wares. Gameplay has improved to the point where the nostalgic among you mentally intone “I think I got the point” in a fake Scottish accent as a baddie gets harpooned. A definite improvement on earlier tragedies.