Walker

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The game scrolls right-to-left (which is a unique element for its genre considering that most action shooters mainly move from left-to-right) and you are called to destroy everything in your path, to progress to the next screen. What is quite impressive with Walker is its controls. The game has you using both the Amiga's mouse and the keyboard/joystick. By using the mouse, you move your weapons' aiming cross-hair and you can lock your targets by keeping the right mouse button pressed. The keyboard or joystick can be used to control the Walker's body movement, to either stride to the left or retreat to the right. The movement patterns are limited, since there is no jumping or any other special move that would help you avoid enemy fire; so you have to be careful in how to tackle the enemy while you're constantly on the move. The game takes place some time during the WWII and the enemy forces consist of armored vehicles, airplanes, zeppelins or even mobile cannons (dragged by horses) from the very first minute you step your metallic legs on stage. The enemy will attack in waves that include soldiers shooting, parachute-troopers throwing grenades and snipers hiding inside buildings! As you progress through the game's time eras, the enemy technology will gradually improve and you'll be forced to confront faster and more devastating forces on each level. Walker's quest is not a...walk in the park, so you shouldn't let the enemy overwhelm you and kill you fast! Walker's developers tried to create a unique shooter that differs much from all the other games of its genre back in 1993! And I believe they did a great job!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The game's presentation is great and the atmosphere the player into an immensely bloody world, with wonderful dark and post-apocalyptic settings and some nice parallax scrolling. The dark, moody backgrounds are a bit darker than they should be, though. Each level depicts its own era of time and carries all relevant enemy sprites. The visual effects -and particularly the explosions- are fantastic and fill in the screen with scattered pieces when heavy targets are destroyed (such as tanks, trains, airplanes etc). Walker itself is greatly animated and walks smoothly with its head locking the targets around the screen and killing them with its menacing blazing fire! (Note: Walker actually reminds me of the ED-209 robot from the 1987 RoboCop movie!) The game's sound is equally impressive, offering a wide variety of high quality sampled sound effects like gunfire, explosions, enemies' screams when they die and a communication chatting between your pilot and your Military Base! You must listen to Walker's mechanical moving sounds to understand what we mean! Unfortunately, although all sound effects are fantastic, there is actually no in-game music except of a pretty good introductory theme that sports digitized voice sound-bites.
Walker is a fun game to play and every Amiga owner should give it a try!