Zeewolf 2: Wild Justice

The Good
The very effective use of graphics, no eye-candy, just the game, and yet with so many constraints (the game can run on a quite low-spec'd machine) there are very cool effects, explosions and general mayhem on the screen. The mouse control, very original and yet, indeed very effective, providing analog control when joysticks were mostly digital (left or right). The very challenging missions, even though near the end, you start to feel some repetition. Quite hard overall level. The intuitive "reload" and "options" screen, complete with real-time "thumbnail" of the game. Neat. The few but very cool weapons, special mention to the homing missile.

The Bad
The game sounds are quite minimal, effective but not so immersing. The music is really so-so. There was basically no improvements from version 1, this sequel can easily filed under "datadisk/extra mission set", when one could have wished new weapons.

The Bottom Line
Well, to my (admittedly limited, I'm not a hard-core gamer) knowledge, this game is one of a kind. I'm not talking about the premise, similar to "choplifter" but in fact really deeper, but of the graphics engine. To this day, I'm yet to be shown a similar use of pseudo-3D and shaded polygons, witch BTW is quite hard to categorize : it's definitely not isometric, not either of the then (not so) popular gouraud & phong shadings, but to accommodate with the controls, some "liberty" has been taken with regards to real world physics, let alone realistic landscape & objects (plain (albeit shaded) polygons, fixed-size sprites, period) but this not only conveys a sense of real freedom of movement, it's also really FAST. This game never made the big print in magazines, and had a very discreet career. But after many, many years of Amiga & console gaming, and a bucket load of great games, this one is very high on the list, and remain a real good destructive fun every time I run it, just for a quick blast. I'll end this enthusiastic (and possibly biased) review on a newsflash note : The Zeewolf series run without any problem under UAE (http://www.freiburg.linux.de/~uae/) emulation.