Zzap


Beverly Hills Cop
By Tynesoft
Amiga 500

 
Published in Zzap #59

Beverly Hills Cop

Axel Foley is back in action, this time on the Amiga with a heavily rewritten script. Instead of a car chase, Beverly Hills Cop now starts off with a horizontally-scrolling warehouse shoot-out (the C64's level two).

The next level has Axel chasing the three vans in his Mercedes sports car. This is represented in full, Hard Drivin'-style 3D. Shoot three vans and a survivor leads you to the grounds of the villains' mansion (level three). A pseudo-isometric 3D view shows Axel blasting his way through the garden maze.

The final level has a first-person perspective of the mansion's dull, 3D interior. Axel must rescue the hostages, shoot the guards, and find Mr. Big.

Robin

Beverly Hills Cop

Amiga Beverly Hills Cop has some appalling main character animation (the garden scene is unbelievably basic). Sound effects aren't all that hot either. The Hard Drivin'-style scene is a good idea but the car drives like a brick and is amazingly slow when it hits the grass. This scene is the best of the game but even this fails in its execution, summing up the whole game in the process.

Stu

The Hard Drivin' level is much improved over the C64's vertically-scrolling version, but gameplay sadly fails to match up to the graphics. Level one has a nice parallax scroll, but simply walking right and shooting the baddies is too limited - you can't even jump. The two other levels lack this graphic sheen, and more importantly the simple playability needed to succeed.

Verdict

Presentation 70%
Inter-level screens, three difficulty levels, and ability to jump to next level.

Beverly Hills Cop

Graphics 60%
Fairly impressive racing sequence, but other levels are dull.

Sound 59%
Reasonable gunshot FX. Disappointing intro tune.

Hookability 44%
Level one is poor for an 8-bit game, level two frustrating, and later levels worse.

Lastability 41%
Ability to play all the levels diminishes urge to play.

Overall 42%
Promising ideas are spoilt by poor implementation.