It seems better than the first episode, which I found a rather poor ensemble of mini-games.
The graphics are great, and the game is an horizontal jet pack affair which starts off rather harshly,
but you learn to do better.
3/5
Agent X II is a rather good sequel to the rather OK Agent X.
It's quite a good game, and much like the original has multi-format levels. The first of which is the longest and hardest, but pretty decent, you basically fly on your way to a base on the moon using a jetpack, and shoot lots of generic looking enemies. I like that the powerups are sweets, lemon drops, raspberry drops, and so on. It's a horizontally scrolling shooter basically, there's 2 boss encounters with the same big weird brain looking creature, and after the second you reach the moon base. The first level in 128k mode has a really nice AY Chip tune playing throughout, very atmospheric indeed. problem with this section is it's a bit of a memory test, if you know the order the enemies come in you can successfully navigate it, but it's gonna take a while.
After this there's a rather crap jump up the levels type vertical level, which isn't that much fun, but I'm pretty sure you can just keep jumping up til' you reach the top, after that the final confrontation with the Mad Prof, which is a breakout clone. It's pretty good, but the graphics are a bit naff, and it can take ages to actually win, maybe hours of bouncing the ball around.
OK I made it sound a little slapdash, but for under 2 quid at the time no complaints from me, and it's infinitely better than the first installment in the series.
I can't work out if it's a good or a bad thing the 3rd game never appeared? Could go either way?
I marked it a 4 on the site as I do enjoy it, it's a really good budget game, but I personally gave it a 3.5, which mathematically would be technically rounded up to a 4. So there we have it, cheap and cheerful wins again.
