Keep a firm grip on the nearest mini-gun, strap on some Kevlar body armour, stock up with as much medicine cabinet medication as it's humanly possible to carry, and brace yourself fo the war of first-person perspective dungeon explore-em, collect-em, hatch-em and despatch-em shoot-em-ups.

The quest for the top definitive Doom clone is gaining compulsive momentum among Amiga developers, game reviewers, owners, politicians et al, and it's getting more intense with every passing second of the clock.

Today, right this minute, AF's looking at Behind the Iron Gate from Black Legend. Thankfully, it's not trying to be Doom - more an improvisation on the theme of Wolfenstein, if you treat the word 'improvisation' with a bit of artistic licence.

Naturally enough, Iron Gate places the nondescript character-you-never-actually-see in a 3D maze. Control is through a combination of mouse and keyboard: up to four different modes can be chose and it works well, so anyone not finding a method they find easy to use probably has trouble with the foil seal in coffee jars as well.

Your missions revolve around exploring the maze, collecting whatever lies in yoru path - weapons, keys, ammo, armour, food etc - and using the keys to access areas previously blocked off by iron gates or force fields.

This eventually leads to the main task, which is setting off a bomb to blow the whole level up and then making a slapdash mad rush to reach the exit before it explodes.

At first it seems like fun. The full 360 degree rotational backdrop moves smoothly with no visible slow-down. But the monochromatic graphics quickly become disorientating and this can be disastrous in later levels, especially when you're desperately trying to make it to the exit before the bomb blows.

In an attempt to help, there are pictures of famous people and other objects on the walls, but they don't really help because they appear in clusters: when unfamiliar objects appear, all it really tells you is that you've reached somewhere new.

The biggest snag, though, is the lack of a map overview of the area you've explored. In later levels you can pick up a scanner, which at least gives a limited view of what's up ahead, but it isn't enough to save the gamer from complete exasperation in the crucial process of trying to plan a speedy escape route.

A quick exit is vital, so your only option is physically rehearsing the route. And that's very unsatisfactory, especially if you run into a wall and disorientate yourself. Get it wrong and it's back to the beginning of the level.

And the structure of the levels is such that you can complete an entire level and then be forced to do it all over again, just because you didn't quite make the exit in time. It feels too much like drudgery to even contemplate.

The game isn't a bad one, it's just not very good. Not terrible, but not memorable. It'd be fine as a budget release but at this price it's competing with Fears and Gloom. My advice is wait to see who good these two are before making a purchase decision.

Wie bei allen vom indizierten PC-Vorbild "Duum" geklonten Metzeleien pa" auch die Hintergrundstory zu Black Legends Robot-Schlachtbacnk bequem auf die Rückseite einer Briefmarke: Anno 2184 schmoren einigen Blechkameraden die Sicherungen durch, dabei hausen die Silikon-Kollegen in einem Hochsicherheitsknast! Es ist also Zoff hinter Gittern angesagt...

Insgesamt 24 stufenlos scrollende 3D-Dungeons muß de wackere Peacemaker durcheilen, wobei ihm die Programmierer natürlich von Anfang an emsig ins Handwerk pfuschen. So fehlt von einer brauchbaren Wumme erst mal jede Spur, dafür packt der fröhliche Verschrotter Munition, Arzneikästen oder kleine Snacks in seinen geräumigen Kampfanzug.

Nur leider klappt das nicht so simpel, wie es gerade in diesem Genre sein sollte, weil bei der Steuerung die Laufrichtung und das Fadenkreuz voneinander getrennt zu handhaben sind. Es ist also Eingewöhnung erforderlich, wenn man mit all den Mini-Panzern, Flugdrohnen und feindlichen Blechtechs fertig werden will, schon weil sie das Feuer wirklich noch aus dem hintersten Winkel eröffnen.

Doch ohne Preis kein Fleiß, und deshalb lassen atomisierte Gegner das Bankguthaben anschwellen, von dem man sich in Shops zwischen den Etagen allerlei Extrawaffen und -rüstungen kaufen darf - was freilich voraussetzt, daß die überall verstreuten Schalter-, Schlüssel- und Codekarten-Puzzles ebenso souverän erledigt werden wie das "heiße" Geschäft.

Die anzutreffenden Sprites stammen (genau wie die arg spärliche Möblierung der Labyrinthe) geradewegs aus dem Renderer uns sind deshalb auch ganz nett anzusehen. Von den absolut untexturierten Zellenwänden in eintönigem Grau oder Braun ;äßt sich das jedoch nicht sagen, weshalb der optische Gesamteindruck abgesehen von der fabelhaften Animation eher bescheiden ist.

Ziemlich unauffällig plätschert auch der Sound aus den Boxen, wobei im Hauptmenü düstere Melodien das Ohr umschmeicheln, während man in den Korridoren der Vollzuganstalt mit passablen Ballergeräuschen vorlieb nehmen muß.

Was ist unter dem Strich also von dieser Premiere zu halten? Nun, wer bereit ist, für blitzschnelle 3D-Animation grafische Abstriche in Kauf zu nehmen, muß sich nur noch mit der fummeligen Steuerung anfreunden, um seinen Spaß zu haben.

Das Gameplay ist jedenfallsüberzeugender als beim direkten Konkurrenten "Deathmask", der sich zudem bloß im 90-Grad-winkel zu drehen vermag.

Und weil verdoomte Highlights wie "Fears" oder "Alien Breed 3D" ohnehin nicht für kleine "Freundinnen" vorgesehen sind, wird der Blick hinter den Eisernen Vorhang wohl die einzige Möglichkeit bleiben, am 500er verblüffend sauber scrollende Baller-Dungeons zu erhaschen! (C. Borgmeier)

Two things spring instantly to that lumpy bit at the front of my brain whose name I've temporarily forgotten but which deals with piping images to that other bit of my brain whose name evades me at the moment but which is all to do with, erm well, remembering things. Two things - Streetfighter Two the movie, and Embryo the game.

SF2 the movie reminds me of Behind the Iron Gate Because it's a film that chugs through 90 minutes at a single pace. From start to finish, each scene's as speedy as the previous, so the climax goes unnoticed amid this blur of action, and therefore scores a very low mark on the thrill-ometer.

So you could argue that it's not Kylie, or the terrible script, or the bad acting, or the pitiful fight scenes, or even the shoddy production values that make SF2 a terrible movie, it's the pace that kills it.

The pace kills Behind the Iron Gate for exactly the opposite reason, as it's either frantic or grass-growingly slow. Most levels start fast and funky, with monsters running around all over the place and you desperately trying to find a quiet moment to pick up some extra ammo or reload a gun, which is fun.

Once you've shot everything (usually within five minutes), that's it for excitement and you're left with the tedium of finding keys, unlocking doors and generally finishing the level. After ages of this, you've got the final task of activating a bomb and rushing to the exit. In theory this is an exciting finale, in reality, it's just too much to handle. Start, stop, snooze, rush - it's not a fun pace.

IRON HORSE
Embryo (AP43, 62%) was a game also by Black Legend that I reviewed last year. It should have been a stonkingly fast and furious 3D shoot-'em-up, a sort of flight sim without the technical side, but because all the enemies needed a stupid amount of hits before they blew up, it was just too hard. Any nine year old child could have told them that, but I guess, like most software companies, the game was tested by in-house playtesters who were far too close to the game to realise it.

I suspect the same's true of Behind the Iron Gate, which contains a whole host of glaringly obvious problems (what software producers call "unique gameplay features") that hit you the very first time you play it. It'll never be a great game, but a little more thought could have improved this massively.

The idea's simple - pick up guns and ammo to snuff the monsters, pick up keys and security passes for gates, pick up food and armour to stay in shape. Run around, find a bomb, find the exit, then set off the bomb and dash out. I'll take them one at a time.

Like real life, the weapons are great, with great sounding lasers and shotguns. With four options for arrow key/mouse combinations, you can find one to suit you, although I favoured moving with the arrows and waggling the gunsights around with the mouse.

By the time you get to level four, you're loaded up to the eyeballs with guns and ammo and ready to face anything, but due to a dumb pass code system, if you want to restart from a later level rather than playing through, you're only given the option to buy one of everything, including ammo packs. This is a moronic oversight.

Each key will open any door once, although the passes only work on what appear to be swing-bins. The problem with the keys is that it's possible to open the wrong door and be unable to complete the level because something vital's hidden behind the door you should have opened, so you're left wandering around the maze until you realise this, or die of boredom.

IRON MAN?
The food keeps your strength up (obviously) and that leaves us with that bob/exit thing. So long as the monsters don't kill you, you can take as long as you like to find everything, but once you've activated the bomb, you've got mere seconds to reach the exit. Unfortunately (and this is the crux of the game's poorness), due to the featureless mazes, if you bump into a wall or get momentarily disoriented in these blank-walled mazes, then the bomb goes off and you die. One slip up, that's all it takes, and it's game over.

Obviously this isn't Doom on the Amiga, but it is a vast improvement over Dungeon Master type games where you jump forwards a block at a time, and it also runs on all types of Amiga. The running speed's good, the monster graphics are good and despite being completely plain, even the 3D works okay, so all that's really missing is a good game. Ego have done all the hard work with this, so all that's left to do is wish them better luck next time.