Fire and Forget 2 - Amstrad GX4000

Review comments

This first release from French software house Titus is set in the far flung future. A conference of all world leaders is being held in the city of Megapolis, and the outcome of this historic event could be world peace. Hurrah! However, a ruthless gang of terrorists is driving towards the city with a large nuclear bomb and they intend to blow up the whole place - leaders and all - and then take over the world during the following confusion.
There's only one person who can save the day - and that's you! So grab the keys to your 850 horse power deathmobile, the Thundermaster II, arm its guns and missiles and take to the highway and destroy the villains before they complete their foul mission!
The 3D action is viewed from behind your car, and the object is to race down the road (or fly for a limited period of time if you manage to run over the special fuel cannisters), catch up with the convoy leader and destroy it. The ultimate aim is to destroy the bomb-carrying convoy leader on the fifth level.
Between you and the convoy leader is a load of other baddies, all of who want to trash your lovely vehicle - so avoid their shots and blast them before they crash into you!
A distance meter ticks down as you zoom along, so you know how far ahead the leader is, and once he's in your sights you can let rip with your missiles. When he's destroyed you move onto the next, more difficult level - can you make it to level five and save the world?

Staff comments

Deary me, what an awful effort to be one of the very first Amstrad games! This is so much worse than the Sega game, it could (and probably should) be a different game. The scrolling's atrocious, the road doesn't meet the horizon, and the steering is very slow to respond. Amstrad GX4000 Fire and Forget II delivers an insipid, two-dimensional challenge that'll have you nodding off in a matter of minutes. One to be avoided like the plague, methinks.

I played Sega Fire and Forget II first, and had high hopes for this - after all the GX4000 console features a load of hardware chips, and therefore this version should be even better! However, all I can say is the programmers couldn't have used them - this version is dire in the extreme. The scrolling is jerky, the car moves and responds like a badly crippled slug, the road update is juddery and unconvincing, and most of the sprites look like marauding blue cabbages. All these factors piled together make for a game that's about as much fun as having your teeth pulled out. In fact the only good thing I've got to say is that GX4000 software surely can't get any worse than this.