Frontline

Copyright : Zeppelin Games | Reviewed by : Ritchardo

A crack mercenary unit has penetrated a maximum security compound in a quest to pinch some top secret documents. You take the role of this soldier of fortune as you aim to battle your way through the enemy stronghold. This was Zeppelinâ??s first venture into the 8-bit games market.

Graphics

The main view window is large enough to see fully what is going on around you and the sprites are fairly good drawings if a little blocky. The animation of your mercenary and the enemy soldiers is very good and everyone walks convincingly around the screen. A nice graphical touch is the health bar indicated by the human face. As you lose energy the face scrolls down to reveal a skull. When you reach full skull mode then youâ??ve come a cropper!

The whole game has a very Commando meets Ikari Warriors feel about it and this is reflected in the graphics, which donâ??t compare well with either title to be honest. Everything is certainly clear enough in the game but you canâ??t help but compare it to the games that itâ??s desperately trying to be.

Sound

The rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun fire is pretty good, other than that the sound is rather unremarkable â?? the odd blip to indicate youâ??ve picked something up but a missed opportunity in terms of sound overall.

Gameplay

As Commando clones go, Frontline isnâ??t too bad and it does set itâ??s self apart from itâ??s famous role model by allowing the player to scroll along the screen in eight different directions (rather than Commandoâ??s straight ahead policy) but the game moves very slowly and this has a definite detrimental effect on the gameâ??s playabililty.

The other major gripe with gameplay is the AI of the enemy soldiers. The soldiers just seem to come at you and then wander past, occasionally firing the odd bullet at you â?? youâ??re far more likely to die by being run over by one of the jeeps or motorbikes than be taken out by the onfoot soldiers