Amiga ~ Dogs of War Review

Overview

Have you ever seen the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie "Commando"?

It was a cool movie right? That is alot like what Dogs of War is like. Everytime I play this game, "Commando" comes to mind.

Gameplay

In the movie "Commando" Schwarzenegger equips himself with a large variety of weapons and goes off save his own daughter, killing maybe around one hundred baddies along the way. In Dogs of War, you don't exactly do that, but it's similar.

The world is full of bad people, corrupted by many bad things that make them do bad things. And there are these good people who are very willing to pay you a large sum of money to do these jobs for them, jobs that require you to stop the bad guy from doing whatever they are doing, with a revenge bonus for killing more baddies and blowing things up. But before you can perform your duties, you need weapons and this is what makes the game so fun.

In "Commando" Schwarzenegger busts into a weapons store with a bulldozer and steals all his weapons; guns, grenades, a rocket launcher and even face paint, you name it.

Fairly likewise for this game, you play the good guy and spend a moment in the weapons store wisely making limited spending decisions before you face the enemy; pistols, rifles, machine guns, rocket & grenade launchers and even a flame thrower. All guns have a different range and rpm rate. And all require you to purchase ammo for them in order to work. Worth mentioning are those pathetic pistols that fire only a matter of a few cms onscreen and not much faster than yourself.

Now it's off to war! Sadly I'm afraid, this part of the game isn't as good as "Commando". It's pretty much overhead move and shoot, Ikari Warriors style. The baddies act as though they were blind, and if you don't count that, then you can say that they are far dumber than those dumb baddies in "Commando".

The endings of missions are nowhere near as dramatic or rewarding as in "Commando". You just make it to the end of the level by touching a representative symbol of your mission and that's it. For example, to kill a drug baron, you just move into him.

But all that still doesn't detract any of the fun! Kill a bunch of baddies, blow up mines, tanks and turrets, then reload at the weapons store with your hard earned rewarded cash for another day of mindless violence. It's great!

8.5 out of 10

Graphics

Most of the graphics are quite ordinary, very much like they would on the arcades from the late 80s. All the baddies look and die exactly the same on all levels; by falling and disappearing into the ground. Your character onscreen looks exactly the same regardless of which weapon you're using, which is a bit of a shame seeing you're not going to see how cool holding a chain gun would look. Some parts of the game have pretty good detail and the best I've seen are dead amputated soldiers in a blown up tank!

3.5 out of 5

Sound and Music

The sound and music in this game are PHAT! Yeah, PH phat and I mean it. The sound effects are so vibrant, even those weener little pistols that go "PHOW PHOW PHOW!". Then when you let your machine gun rip into a roaming jeep across the screen, you'll hear the deflected bullets going "dwooh, tooing, pheew!". Watching bad guys die doesn't look exciting, but you can hear them die in agony as they wail "Eeeoooahhh! Ahhh!".

Woah, and the music is just so engaging. As repetitive as it is, it doesn't fall short of what really is excellent war music. Just go listen to it and I promise that you will get hooked! Heck, it's more than worthy of being in a movie!

It is a shame how rocket launchers have no sound effects whatsoever and explosions could have been much livelier. But hey! The music makes up for it!

5 out of 5

Game Design

All the levels mainly consist of fighting your way up the screen, eventually changing to a left or right scrolling bit where you have to make your way through a mine field or a bunch of gun turrets with a few baddies thrown in. The level scenarios are pretty ordinary like killing someone for revenge. Pffff!

All in all, it's not mightily interesting like in "Commando".

3.5 out of 5

Longevity

The number of levels is fair enough, enough to keep you occupied for a few hours if you don't cheat. The game is quite difficult. Due to the number of enemies onscreen, patience is required for success, which is why I tend to cheat all the time! Especially in two-player where you actively try to kill more baddies and blow more things up than the other player.

4 out of 5

For: get to buy a large variety of weapons and equip them with ammo, kill lots of baddies, vibrant sound effects, engaging music, good 2-player fun.

Against: levels not all that interesting, can't change difficulty, but at least the baddies are dumb ie blindly wandering all over the screen, graphics aren't so flash.

All together, Dogs of War is a great war game. You get to buy really cool weapons and try them out on a large army of brainless men, just like in "Commando". Too bad the ending isn't as good as the classic man to man fight between Matrix and Benot (stop this obsession with "Commando" already!).