The last thing that the toiling Gamer team wanted was another platform game after the excesses of Christmas. Especially after having to beat some drunken fool back up the chimney because he nicked my mince pies, but alas here it is - the first of a new breed of 1993 platformers.

Ocean are really into this film tie-in thing, they do all sorts from Hudson Hawk to Cool World and in my opinion they don't do them very well. Basically because none of the games resemble the film in any way.

You play the role of Riggs or Murtaugh the head case copper who is played so well by Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon films. Thus, being a nutty copper with a testosterone overdose, you are sent on various ridiculous missions in which you are hideously out-numbered by axe and machine-gun wielding psychopaths.

Loathed as I am to say it I actually quite got into Lethal Weapon. It has a certain simplicity, unlike most games which treat you as through you should be knowing what you're doing seeing as you bought the game and everything.

Your character starts off in police headquarters and you have to bound around from room to room to choose your first mission. There are three to choose the first of your three missions. One you cannot select until you have picked up a secret code from somewhere or other.

This was the first aspect which drew me to the game. You aren't thrown in right at the deep end, you start off on a relatively easy mission and work your way through.

I was quite disappointed at first with the graphics because they seem unnecessarily simple but the reason becomes apparent after you've been playing for a bit. Each and every sprite on the screen has its own individual little movement whether it be looking around furtively of having a peek over the side of a ledge, which is a very strong sign that the programmers have taken a long time over the game.

The rest of the scenery is very simple, barrels, plain walls and the like which gives the game a very spartan appearance. Apart from that, the graphics are pretty spot on - everything moves very smoothly and clearly.

There are three main sorts of baddies. The first are the usual henchmen - in the films you usually have about four or five of them who get shot in the first scene. Basically they're stupid and wait for you to shot first.
Next up are the commando types who get shot very quickly. But you have to watch them they do shoot very quickly too. Last but not least is the mad Chinese man with his meat cleaver - no gun, just a big chopper. He tries to lop your bonce off every time you venture in his space.

Sound FX are pretty much what you might expect - gun noises, things falling over and people dying - they're certainly not bad, but the game would undoubtedly benefit from something a little beefier )how about a cup of Bovril - Ed).

I must admit that I did like Lethal Weapon a lot - I never have been much of a fan of platform games but this one is appealing to all levels not just the hardcore bunch. In saying that true platform fans may find Lethal Weapon a bit easy in some respects. Either way, well worth a look.

Ho hum, another movie tie-in. Well, the Lethal Weapon movies have been around for about four or five years now, and show no signs of getting any more original with age. They're based around two cops with contrasting characters - a placid family man and a wild, disrespectful renegade - who, braving every cliché in the book, overcome their differences, work together to fight corruption and have a few jokey male-bonding scenes along the way. Usually, at a hot-dog stand. Hollywood thought long and hard about this one. Oh dear, this is all getting a bit cynical. Still, let's take a look at the facts.

Action men
Successful action movie becomes computer game. Any votes for a complex simulation? A Monkey Island-style adventure? How about a platform shoot-em-up then? Staying true to the film's lack of innovation, the programming team have come up with a good old left-to-right, scrolling platform game. But, let's face it, originality was never an essential quality for a great game.

The plot is based loosely on the three films and the main characters look roughly like Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. The action starts off in police headquarters where Riggs and Murtaugh (Gibson and Glover) have to solve three cases in order to get a special assignment. When they finish the special assignment they get drafted into Internal Affairs and go after some corrupt big-wigs in the force who've been selling off confiscated firearms (yes, a little bit of politics, there).

The first three cases can be attempted in any order but the manual recommends that you take case one first, then case two and finally case three. So much for freedom of choice.

There's another decision to be made before you can get down to action - which of the cops to have. Riggs is better at hand-to-hand combat, while Murtaugh carries a more powerful gun, but again the game dictates your choice. Some levels are full of extra ammunition, so you'd be a fool to pick Riggs and his weedy gun. In other levels the ammo's thin on the ground so Murtaugh is out of the question.

Sewer bound
With your 'selections' made it's off to the first case. The dynamic duo must capture the profits of a drug cartel that are stashed on a ship at the harbour. The second case has them exploring the city's sewers searching for terrorist bombers and in the third they've got to rescue an informant from a derelict factory.

The object of each mission may differ but they all play in the same way. The standard mix of running along shooting heavies, jumping on to moving platforms and picking up power-ups and energy refills doesn't change from level to level.

The enemies always appear in the same places. They always fire in the same way. There's an easy route across the platforms, or you can risk losing a life and go for a hard-to-reach bonus or power-up. And after a couple of levels, at the end of each case, there's a boss villain who needs a massive load of hits to destroy.

So far all this seems OK, and it is. The graphics are crisp and the locations look good - more colour and some parallax wouldn't have hurt, though. The music's not bad and the sound of the thudding impact of the bullets is suitably gruesome. But after an hour of plugging away you begin to get the impression that there isn't a whole lot to Lethal Weapon.

When you've overcome the initial urge to race through every level with guns blazing you'll find the only way to make it through a case with your lives intact is to plod along waiting for an enemy to appear, dodge their fire, take 'em out and go on to the next one.

The platforms' layout make things tricky and when you first go through a level it's hard to tell if some are platforms or are just part of the scenery - until you plummet off screen and lose another life.

Once you know where to go and when to shoot, the game gets frustrating because you just want to get on with it and not have to wait around for the right moment to fire or jump. All this timing and practice is what platformers are all about, so what's the problem? Well, when it becomes irritating instead of challenging you know the game's not for you.

If the game had played a bit quicker, had a few more enemies here and there, maybe (Heaven forbid!) tried something new it could be something more than what it is. There are no deep, or eve shallow puzzles and even the slightest bit of detective work would make the game interesting. As it is there's only one route through each of the levels and the occasional door switch to push, and it's never a million miles away from the door.

All these niggly points show just what an ordinary game Lethal Weapon is. It isn't badly programmed, it all works very slickly and will probably give anyone who buys it a few days' fun. But there's nothing impressive about it all - even as it stands, a simultaneous two-player mode could have rescued it.

No, it's just a desperately average game that's almost identical to every other platform game you've bought, played and can now see on sale at £9.99 on a budget label.

If you're thinking about buying this because you're a fan of the films, you'll find little to link the game with the movie apart from a nice picture of Mel, Danny and the stumpy one with grey hair who's not done anything descent since Raging Bull on the box. (What about Goodfellas? Ed.). If you're thinking about buying this because you want another platform shoot-em-up, think again.

What's here is nothing new and you already have something similar in your software stash. Technically it would be at home on an 8-bit console, not an Amiga. These sort of games need to be noisy, dazzling, fast and frantic, as te console ads on TV scream at us, and sadly this game hasn't kept with the pace.

Think of the Lethal Weapon movies. They're big budget affairs, spectacular, slick, funny, though not exactly what you'd call 'high art'. Oh, they aren't very original either. Ocean's game of the movies (it's no longer just based on number three in the series - this is now a name licence) rather predictably transforms the antics of the wisecracking duo into a platform shoot-'em-up.

Initially this may seem like a Bad Thing. Memories of Navy Seals resurfaced when I first loaded up Lethal Weapon. But forget any such comparisons. Superficially, Lethal Weapon may appear to be from the same packet of instant-platformer-just-and-water. But believe me, there are just enough new ingredients in there to make it a worthwhile affair.

Ah, but wait a minute - the Lethal Weapon stories all hinge on the buddybuddy relationship of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. How can that be recreated in a computer game? The designers obviously decided it couldn't, and so what we have is the option to play either one of the characters in a series of solo missions.

And what about that big budget aspect then? Surely the game must feature some pretty spectacular set pieces and special effects. Ah, well actually, now. There are a few generic platform identikit pieces - swinging girders, ropes, ladders, even a Donkey Kong sequence - but in Lethal Weapon, big time spectacular things are conspicuous by their absence.

Okay, let's turn to the humour. Surely there are some moments of humour to relieve the tension, some fine set-pieces where Mel Gibson's character gets to do his wig-out crazy guy routine? Well, no. This isn't Monkey Island, and the fact that the characters look laughably unlike their big screen counterparts aside, I suspect most player's ribs will remain untickled.

Nuts. I'm not painting a very positive picture. And, strange though it seems, I really do like the game. You know what I'm talking about. Just take a bash at the demo on our coverdisk. Fun, isn't it? Not exactly a breakthrough in programming technology, but fun nonetheless. And the great thing is that the full game contains loads of the stuff. Masses of people to shoot, kick and blow up. Miles of locations to explore, with lots of variation, and some reasonable background stuff - construction sites, factories, sewers - that kind of thing.

DON'T MENTION BRUCE WILLIS
Where Navy Seals trudged, and Hudson Hawk was awkward and frustrating, Lethal Weapon finally gets the balance just right. The main character feels controllable, the odds aren't ridiculously stacked against the player, but neither are the levels a walkover.

With four sizable levels, plus sub-levels and hidden bits, it's going to take the best player weeks to penetrate eery nook and cranny of the game. Lethal Weapon works in an unpretentious, single minded kind of way. Sort of like your average quality console product really (and you thought you could read at least one review without a console reference in it).

Right, I've blown the review by telling you exactly what I think of the game, so in a bizarre reversal of reviewing code, I'm going to tell you exactly what happens in the game (just in case you haven't been playing the coverdisk demo).

From the main office, it's initially possible to select one of the first three missions. All these must be completed before the fourth can be tackled - neat. After a not-too-painful loading delay, it's then into the thick of the action. Statistics and stuff are kept to a minimum, with lives and ammo being pretty much all the player has to worry about (extra weapons and ammo clips can be collected along the way).

And that's pretty much it, really. It's then a matter of kicking, shooting, climbing, running and jumping through the scrolling levels, walking through doors to other sections, throwing switches, locating hostages, defusing bombs, and all that kind of Lethal Weaponish stuff.

As I said, it's not terribly original. And it lacks the grace and beauty of games such as Another World or Prince of Persia. But as movie licences go, this is no disgrace, despite the rather predictable platform format. And of course, in time honoured fashion, it's got practically nothing aside from a few namechecks to associate it with the actual source material.

But I'm not here to discuss the positive and negative aspects of licensing (not right now anyway). I'm here to tell you whether Lethal Weapon is fun or not. It is. End of story. Goodnight.