Saboteur 2: Avenging Angel

STORY / GAMEPLAY
You control a female ninja named Nina (the sister of the deceased hero from the original Saboteur game!) Your main mission is to enter into a highly secured compound, divided into blocks, caves and tunnels, to prevent the release of a nuclear missile which will destroy the world and avenge your brother's death. The enemies, like huge android guards with guns and flamethrowers or large pumas will try to block your way. You must also collect some tapes to use on the main Terminal and these tapes can be found inside a variety of boxes. The compound covers around 700 computer screens, so your task is difficult (in fact too difficult!) Compared to its predecessor some improvements and some steps back are simultaneously spotted. Fighting enemies is a little more interesting than in Saboteur 1 but sometimes the environments look pretty empty. Also, the map is much larger than in Saboteur 1. Either way, Saboteur 2 is an amazing game for the 8bit home computers and if you love espionage action mixed with some ninja skills, then this game is surely fun (you should give it a try if you haven't tried it back in the late 80s).

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The Amstrad's version is great and offers some nice visual features, much like the C64 and ZX Spectrum versions. The CPC uses a more bright color palette, and the game's visuals look decent enough, though they are not too much different from the first outing. The collision detection suffers at times, making combat quite frustrating and the sprites' animation is quite slow (at least compared to the C64 version). Note that the game runs on flip-screen mode (as in all the other 8bit versions) but, overall, the game plays well! The sound of this particular version features one of the best and most memorable tunes ever composed for the Amstrad CPC home computers. Note that the CPC version is the only in which the introductory tune continues to play during gameplay (unfortunately without any sound effects). Comparably, its counterparts ZX and C64 versions have only sound effects during gameplay (!)