Reviews

a "false scrolling" beat'em up based on the darkman character. "false scrolling" means that, after you have killed all the enemies in a precise portion of the street, the screen scrolls briefly leading to another well defined (it never changes) segment of background, where it stops again. in the first level you have to kill from two to three identical enemies (and which seem identical to the ones on us gold's vigilante) per screen, some equipped with a gun, some not. sometimes you have to jump on a yellow rubbish bin or whatever, placed on the centre of the sidewalk, or dodge a dog that drains your energy and drags you backward. the rest never changes, and you have only two moves, the punch and the flying kick. it's a boring, repetitive, scarcely playable effort.

it's a miserable tie in, a theft, considering that it was a release from a major software house (ocean) in 1991, and that the programming techniques were quite advanced at that time.

that's why i'm giving 1/5 to it.


edit: oh, oh, the other levels ARE DIFFERENT! 2/5, then.

I found myself extremely disappointed with Darkman. Poor sprites, limited gameplay along with the insane difficulty of the enimies, who use weapons against your fists! I found Darkman almost unplayable, its only saving grace is some fantastic music from Jonathan Dunn. The music alone is the only reason it doesn't get a one.

One of several movie tie-ins which were increasingly more often released between the 80's and 90's, Darkman reflects the movie it's based upon: not that good, but not that bad either.

Graphics are colorful albeit not very detailed, sound features some nice tunes and effects, and the different sections provide enough variation to keep you interested, although difficulty is rather high - and you've only got a single life. This one in particular is the most annoying aspect of the game; playability would have benefited from giving the player at least three attempts instead of just one.

As it is, Darkman is overall an OK effort, but nothing really out of the ordinary.

1991 Ocean Software (UK)
by David Box, Jason McGann, Jonathan Dunn and Noel Hines

A score of 5.68 from 24 votes in W.O.S. is not very flattering to any game released by a major company in 1991.
This is my first experience with this game, so when getting myself into unknown gaming territory my judgement may be influenced by those rates. I'll try to remember that.

When starting the game I felt like I was playing a sequel to Joffa's games, Cobra to be more specific. The type of graphics and even the opening menu are very reminiscent of said programmer.

The Darkman character looks very slick and cool, but looks more like a detective in the vein of Sam Cruise than the actual Darkman character himself. The sets are nice but a bit repetitive aswell as the enemies, which all look alike.

The games starts off as a side scrolling beat 'em up. You must pass every set of enemies before moving on. Then evolves into an Untouchables sort of first level and then to a Spy Hunter theme. Overall there are 6 levels to conquer, all well rendered and backing up the movie story competently, but somehow I feel it misses something.
I am sure influenced by a lot of other games I've played so far, and to be quite honest I kinda liked to where the game was going, but in the end it fails to provide real gaming entertainment, at least to me.
Looks Ok, plays Ok, and in the end it's only Ok.

As vulgar as the film ! !

2,5 out of 5 .

A great example of a poor movie license game. Ocean had the best of them, they also had the poorest, and while this isn't the worst it's certainly poor. Very unbalanced and shoddy to play.