 BEACH HEAD II

 US Gold 1985



 CONTROLS : Keyboard, Kempston, Cursor

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 AIM : The evil dictator from BEACH HEAD I, the Dragon, has rebuilt his

 army and is challenging the Allies' power in the Pacific once again.

 Stryker, the Allies' best commander, leads the attack on the dictator's

 stronghold to kill him...



 GAMEPLAY : You can play BHII as either the Allies or the Dragon in the 

 one player game, or play head-to-head in the two-player version. There

 are a number of levels, all of which you must win to capture the

 stronghold / defeat the Allied attack.

 

 1. Parachute Assault -

	Allied troops are airdropped into the battle zone from a

 helicopter. Pressing fire drops a soldier, but if the helicopter is

 too low for the chute to open, the soldier will not live to tell the

 tale! On landing, the soldiers make a dash for the nearest wall, but

 they must brave machine-gun fire from a gun turret controlled by the

 Dragon. However, the machine gunner is hampered by the fact that it

 takes time for him to react and turn the gun on the troops.



 2. Frontal Attack -

	Once all the men are hiding behind the walls at the top they have

 to make their way to the bottom of the screen, avoiding the gunfire. The

 edges of the walls flash in a cycle along the edge of the line. Pressing

 fire brings a man out, and you must control him as he runs down to the

 next section of wall. From the third wall, nearest the gun turret, the

 troops must be manoeuvred to the bottom of the screen. The control method

 is the same as before, except that pressing fire lobs a grenade roughly

 in the direction of the gun turret - you might get lucky and destroy it.

 Pressing fire twice when you select a wall sends down a computer-

 controlled soldier who is useful as a decoy!





 3. Protect Hostages -

	You must protect a group of hostages from the now-desperate enemy

 forces. The Allies have captured a gun turret which can be used against

 the enemy attacks. The hostages run across the screen from left to right

 and have to face four types of enemy attack: a soldier drops stones from

 the top of the wall the hostages have to walk beneath; a tanks rolls on

 from the right and squashes anything in its path; an armoured car drives

 from the left, firing a machine gun; and enemy troops lay mines, popping

 up out of trapdoors (!) to lay them. All of these obstacles can be shot

 by your turret to safeguard the hostages' passage. If you shoot a hostage

 by mistake it only stuns him, but this could give the enemy the

 opportunity to kill him.



 4. Evacuate Hostages -

	Having rescued the hostages, you must ferry them to safety in four

 helicopters that fly over a vertically-scrolling landscape. Tanks and

 guns placed on the terrain try to shoot your 'copters down; the

 difficulty of the terrain is decided by the Dragon before this section

 starts.



5. Showdown -

	Commander Stryker gets to meet the Dragon in face-to-face combat.

 The two opponents stand opposite each other on parallel platforms on

 either side of a river. The idea is to hit the other man with poonta

 sticks - javelins, in effect - until he falls into the water. Each time

 a combatant is hit three times he takes a fall and there are five

 rounds  to be fought before the game is won - or lost.



 COMMENTS : "A pretty simple and boring game."

 RATING : 74% (CRASH #24, January 1986)



 NOW : A rather poor game which is not much fun to play, as well as

 being somewhat bizarre towards the end. I wonder how the Gulf War would

 have ended if George Bush had had to hurl poonta sticks at Saddam

 Hussein?

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 KEYS : Redefinable