Virgin Games
£9.99/£14.99

Twenty four years into the future and New York is plagued by organised crime. The Church of the Third Coming (C3C for short) has discovered an evil drug that turns the quietest of citizens into mad, violent people and now most of the city is under its effect. Except for a small group of people immune to the drugs: The Warriors.

As a Warrior you battle through the city using the 'devastating' weapons found around the streets. No one can be trusted and most of the people you meet are armed and only too ready to blow you away!

The object of the game is to make it to the World Trade Centre and eliminate the controller of a C3C bomb which is set to destroy the building. The slightest indication of your presence could set the bomb on, so you must be very careful where you tread.

New York Warriors is very poor, and the worst aspect is the terrible multi-load system: it takes ages for the computer to load in the separate parts of each level and if you don't succeed on level one you have to load it all in again to restart!

The game has badly defined graphics with monochrome colour. You can't tell what is going on half the time and I would wager you get killed in the first few seconds of play by one of the hidden gun happy idiots! A definite thumbs down from me.

NICK [42%]

The character sprite is a fairly large, blobby chap who runs aruond about as convincingly as pregnant hippo, and the enemies are just as laughable. I found it very easy to complete the first few levels, though the multu-load is such a pain I gave up playing New York Warriors after a very short time. This game would be OK, on a budget label, but I for one would pay ten quid for this donkey.
MARK [30%]

Virgin
£9.99 cass/£14.99 disk
Reviewer: Jonathan Davies

Why is it that anything that's in any way 'happening' these days has to be set in America? Eh? I mean, even here in Bath, even we're capable of injecting a certain amount of groovy style into our lives. But we're not Yankees, are we, so no-one wants to know. Load of cobblers, if you ask me.

The result of this rather narked outburst is that I've just been inspecting New York Warriors, rather than Manchester Warriors or Peckham Warriors. We're in the not-too-distant future, so naturally anarchy and organised crime are rampant, the government has lost control and things, generally, aren't looking too hot for your average law-abiding citizen. The problem is that a group of frug dealers called the Church of the Third Coming have been slipping narcotics into the food and water supplies so that the whole population has fallen asleep. That is, apart from you and an assortment of chums of course. And obviously you've been watching a fair few Walter Hill movies too many 'cos you've decided to call your group The Warriors, with the lauded aim of wiping out all the baddies. The only slight problem is that they've gone and planted a bomb in the World Trade Centre which they plan to blow up unless you all surrender. So in you go to defuse the bomb and save the world.

What a load of crap, eh? And it does nothing to disguise the fact that this is just a slightly rubbishy scrolling shoot-'em-up with not a lot going for it. There are about seven or eight levels (sorry - a bit vague there) which multiload into give you an area of New York between Walt Whitman Park and the World Trade Centre, via places like the Brooklyn Bridge and Broadway. Each of these is made up of an area about three screens wide and three screens high which scrolls in four directions to let you wander around it. I hardly need point out, I suppose, that the whole place is infested with baddies, booby traps and add-on weapons. (Oh, and you can have two players doing it together if you want.)

Okay, time to start pulling it to bits. The graphics are the real let-down. They're not actually bad as such, but they're very Spectrumy, what with the jerky scrolling and overall monochromeness. Then there's your Warrior. Although he can walk in eight directions he can only fire in five - from side to side, forwards plus the diagonals. Not much use when there's baddy behind him, eh? And the multiloader's a complete barst as well. Not only does everything load in unbelievably slowly, but you've got to reload Level One every time you die, even if that's where you lost your last life. Groan.

If you're a mapper or a tipper, and you think you can put up with all that (and I can't say I could for long), New York Warriors might be just the game for you. Okay, so it's got a few original touches, like a bloke asleep on a bench who suddenly wakes up and tries to take you out, but for the rest of us, well, it's hardly going to light our fire.

If you can explain to me why the cover of this game shows a man in white clown makeup wielding a baseball bat, I'll be eternally grateful. It's a pity the artwork i such plop, because I know some people still buy games according to what's on the cover, and New York Warriors deserves a lot better than this.

Imagine a game based on a cross between John Carpenter's movies Escape From New York and They Live, and you've roughly got the idea of New York Warriors. The year is 2014, and a ruthless criminal ring, C3C, almost dominates America. Only The Warriors, immune to C3C's mind-bending drugs, remain to fight; but now in an attempt to flush out the Warriors, the baddies have rendered all of New York's unconscious and planted a nuclear bomb in the World Trade Centre. Your task is to reach and deactivate it in time.

The top-down perspective graphics show the background of New York's parks, subways, bridges and slums; you fight your way through them shooting everyone, C3C thug or apparently innocent civilian who might prove to be dangerously violent. The multi-way scrolling allows you to explore in all directions, but the exit to the next level usually seems to be straight up.

THe graphics are great, the animation fine, and the action relentless; gun-toting Rambo types leap out with Kalashnikovs blazing, sleeping bums jump up and let rip, and explosions tear the streets apart. Hang around anywhere too long and jet-packers fly across dropping bombs - you can't shoot them down, so your only option is to run like buggery.

Along the way you'll find the inevitable extra weapons; the first, a multi-way firing assault rifle, you'll need to fight your way across the heavily defended Brooklyn.

Missile launchers, flame throwers and grenade launchers are found later on; without them, you'll probably be pinned down in a crossfire and be unable to proceed without losing a life. Sometimes you have to make this sacrifice, as the few seconds of invulnerability allow you to pass some otherwise impossible obstacles, but you don't have many lives to play with.

I have a strong suspicion that you aren't going to finish this one without the help of a friend - in two-player mode, both players appear on screen simultaneously, with the progress of the first limited by the current position of the second, if you follow me.

It's the quality of the graphics and the attention to detail which really score - rats scuttle across the roads explosions bloom like fiery flowers, and the snarls on the faces of the thugs are truly scary. Like Ikari Warriors on laxatives, New York Warriors will really get you going.