The intelligent man's Desert Strike, the fighting man's Gunship 2000, the sentimental man's Virus, the intuitive man's Conqueror.

The list goes on. Zeewolf is the most talked about and most played game we have ever seen in the Amiga division of Future Publishing. To help understand the impact, excitement and buzz surrounding the game, you have first got to look at its history and philosophy behind it.

Wheat and turnips
The game plays on an undulating patchwork terrain which enhances the feeling that you are flying over a theatre of war taking place among wheat, turnip and corn fields. This patchwork quilt effect was first revealed to the fledgling 16-bit market with a game called Virus.

Virus put you in control of a spaceship which could hover, flip and turn in 360 degrees of longitude and latitude - probably the ultimate controllable combat craft. In order to harness this incredible flexibility, the control system relied on the mouse - no joystick. The main drawback was the precision required of the gamer. Unless you practised for hours on end, it was no use. Inevitably, you ended up flipping on to your back and crashing into the ground - dead. Those who did spend hours practising, of course, will point out that it was one of the most intuitive control systems around. And for them, it was.

That is why top marks go to Binary Asylum for Zeewolf. The chopper cannot be flipped on its back and crashing into the ground does not waste a life. This lets you concentrate on actually playing the game rather than struggling with the controls. Which is a good thing, because it is one almighty hovering, rotational collective of an experience.

Zeewolf's theatre of war takes place over 32 missions, each progressively more difficult than the last. The first four sorties help train potential pilots in the control system as well as familiarise them with some of the forthcoming missions such as escort duty, hostage rescue, seek and destroy and airlifts (taking various ground assault vehicles to heavily-defended areas to help even the odds for the Zeewolf).

Bangs and crashes
To give you an edge in these missions there are three types of weapon - cannons, rockets and air-to-air missiles. Intelligent use of these arms pays dividends but a mindless spree of blasting brings no reward other than the limited satisfaction of unloading large amounts of firepower and enjoying the accompanying bangs and crashes.

For example, if you line up the chopper properly, you can take out tricky targets before they manage to shoot back. But this requires practice, skill, and a cool head. Something you are not always likely to keep when under fire with extreme prejudice.

In play, the Zeewolf handles faultlessly. Although it is an over-used platitude these days, the control system is intuitive. You can opt to use a joystick, but then you are limited to a turning circle sliced into eight directions that a 'stick can handle. With the mouse, you can learn to turn in small increments at a time, which is incredibly handy when manoeuvring around the gun turrets of the enemy while spitting out death in the shape of high velocity cannon or rocket fire.

There is nothing more satisfying than taking out a battery of surface-to-air missile sites without taking a hit yourself. In fact, this is the first game I've played since joining Amiga Format that had me shouting for joy and cursing with rage oblivious to the tut tuts of the technical people and the derisive laughter of everyone else.

You see, Zeewolf draws you in to its hypnotically spooky, violently surreal world. You get emotionally involved and that brings things down to a personal level - compelling, obsessive, all-consuming and dream-invading. Oh, and just in case you missed it, it is addictive as well.

No sleep till bedtime
Zeewolf's graphics are not going to make you sit back and gawp in wonder, but in terms of gameplay it is excellent. Zeewolf is a return to the old days where gameplay counted most and sleep did not count at all. Do not miss out on Zeewolf, it is the natural successor to Virus and Conqueror and that is not only a good thing, it is a great thing.

As one of AMIGA POWER's foremost proponents of the helicopter (second only to Cam) (and maybe Sue), I approached Zeewolf with a militaristic sense of purpose. Flicking the fuel feed to 'on', arming the weapons systems, checking the flight controls, starting the turbine and engaging the main rotor drive (in my imagination, this is - in reality you just press Fire and you're off). I embarked on the first of a series of missions which would have me swearing enormous amounts. But I didn't mind, because Zeewolf is great.

It's great because it's so helicopter. To wit: a) it makes a 'chocka-chocka-chocka' noise as you fly, b) the helicopter's nose tilts forward, and c) you can unleash apocalyptic rocket-death with a tap on the fire button. The only snag is that the helicopter is bright "Please shoot me" blue. And you get that terrible not-quite-rock music that all helicopter games play.

Zeewolf is almost exactly a cross between Desert Strike and Zarch. It's got the graphics out of Zarch - everything takes place over a scrolling patchwork square, with buildings and trees made out of polygons. And it's got the gameplay from Desert Strike - not just the helicopter-based action, but the whole way the missions are organised.

There are 32 missions (quite a few more than Desert Strike's four), and, as in Desert Strike, each takes place in a different playing area, and is divided up into a set of smaller sub-missions. You might have to assassinate a general by destroying the building he's hiding in, then rescue some POWs and destroy an enemy base's defences to ready it for an invasion. Just like inDesert Strike, really.

But you can do things you can't do in Desert Strike, the most appealing of which is carrying tanks, helicopters and planes on a winch. The physics of this works just like when you pick up an orb in Thrust, except tanks are often bigger than your helicopter and swing around quite alarmingly. There are also escort missions, where you've got to follow a friendly aircraft from A to B making sure it doesn't get shot down.

The only area in which it loses out to Desert Strike is strategy. In Desert Strike you've got to think quite carefully about the order you do things in. Do you hope your few remaining rockets will be enough to destroy the power station? Or do you risk death by popping over to the other side of the map to pick up some more? There aren't really any power-ups in Zeewolf, though - you fly back to your carrier for extra weapons - and it doesn't tend to matter which order to blow stuff up in. The only thing is, you can trade rescued POWs for repairs to your helicopter, so you've got to work out the best time to return to the carrier with them. But where Zeewolf does win over Desert Strike (this might be a good point to stop mentioning Desert Strike, and consider Zeewolf as A Game In Its Own Right), is in tactics.

Tactics come in when you're over the target area and are considering the safest method to deal with the various guns, tanks and helicopters ranged against you.

APACHE
Firstly, it can be pretty fiddly trying to hit things with your weapons. The aiming system is semi-automatic, and to get it to lock on you've got to have the nose pointing approximately at the target. So really you want to come zooming in towards your prey at low attitude, let rip with a few missiles and zoom off again before the enemy gets a chance to fire back. As soon as you start trying to turn around over the target to get another shot your helicopter's nose comes up and you lose airspeed, get caught in the enemy crossfire and die.

And then there's the interaction between the various enemy units. Cobra SAM sites are pretty nasty, but they're ten times worse when there's a Watchdog radar tank nearby guiding the missiles towards your helicopter. So you've got to ignore the missile sites to begin with the radar.

I did get a little vexed with it at times. Given that success depends on lining up perfectly with a target and hitting it before it has the chance to fire back, it seems a little unfair that, because of the way the graphics work, you can't actually see things until you're right on top of them. The scanner helps a bit, but doesn't really give the necessary precision. The other irritating thing is the way targets don't disappear from your scanner once you've blown them up.

You can spend hours on a 'destroy all the patrol boats' mission flying round and round the sea visiting the same targets over and over again until you find the one straggler you missed. Couldn't the dots change colour, or something? And, in fact, your weapons still lock onto blown-up targets, which can make it unnecessarily difficult to pick out a live tank from a group of dead ones. Hrumph.

ROOIVALK
All the same, Zeewolf is an enormously absorbing game that strikes a perfect balance between fast, helicopter-orientated action and slower, more thoughtful play. One minute you're frantically pumping rockets into anything that moves, with bullets streaming past your ears and huge explosions rocking the earth. The next, you're hovering quietly in an unpopulated corner of the map, pondering your next course of action.

Although they're not all that sophisticated, the graphics do the job nicely. From tiny POWs to hulking great frigates, they all look neat and tidy. And then you've got some excellent explosions - enemy planes, in particular, go down in spectacular style. Watch out, too, for garage doors that open to allow tanks to drive out, bullets splashing into the water, and the shadows beneath anything that flies. And, except when there's absolutely loads happening, the screen updates utterly smoothly. (On a 1200, this is. Our increasingly beleaguered 5/600-owning readers will find it's all a bit jerky, though still just about playable).

And it all comes on one disk, which is nice, something you can put down to polygon graphics and absence of badly-drawn graphical menu screens. There's no disk-accessing once the game's started, and it all seems slick and well-organised (apart from you having to use the cursor keys rather than the joystick to select things from menus). The controls take a bit of getting used to, but rapidly begin to make sense. Be wary of the mouse-option, though - Binary Asylum claim it ultimately gives you more control if you practise with it, but it just seemed completely bonkers and uncontrollable to me.

And the password option is a bit of a bodge. You get a password every fourth level up to mission 25, but as a level can take up to 20 minutes to complete, there's still quite a bit of slogging through the same old missions to get to one you're stuck on. It does give you a chance to accrue handy extra lives, though.

Zeewolf is fresh and different, and yet reassuringly familiar. It's explosive, violent, but also coolly detached, just like modern warfare.
But I couldn't honestly recommend it to A500 owners as enthusiastically as I can to people with A1200s. On a 1200. Overflying a frigate is a truly fulfilling experience; on a 500 it causes the screen shudder horribly. That's progress, or something like that.

It's odd what names the military come up with for their equipment, isn't it? You've got the Fighting Falcon, the Challenger, the Buccaneer, the Comanche, the Sidewinder; I mean, the list could go on forever and probably will. But I'll wager no-one has ever thought of calling a Helicopter a Zeewolf before. Never. Only copious quantities of bonce frying west country sun could do this to one and the lads at Binary Asylum have seen plenty of that.

But that's not all! Liberally splattered all over this game (and I mean this literally, after you've been at 'em with your cannon) are Wasps, Sharks, Hippos, Rhinos, Pelicans and more. One day at the zoo and you've practically invented a whole new military vocabulary.

There is a story though, and a very eco-friendly one too. It's all about an evil corporation and a crusading good one, nuclear fission, pollution and public relations; but in fine shoot 'em up tradition it doesn't mean a thing once you've started playing

It could be said that Zeewolf is like Desert Strike with polygons, but I'd rather not. While the idea is similar, Zeewolf manages to be sufficiently original, and not just presentation-wise. For a start, flying a Zeewolf is much more realistic than its cartoon EA counterpart. With the use of detailed polygons it swings and sways in all the right places and at all the right times so it looks the part. I am also lead to believe that it genuinely does perform like a real helicopter and without firsthand experience of flying one, I'm prepared to believe this.

While the use of polygons for the helicopter has resulted in realism the opposite has to be true of the landscape which suffers from a lack of detail in stark contrast to the whirlybird. The same goes for some of the vehicles which appear nicely 3D in form but not so hot in terms of shape. Indeed, like the Zeewolf it's the smaller objects, like missiles and missile launchers that look best.

It may seem as though I'm unfairly criticising the polygon effect but I'm not doing so maliciously. In fact it's a damn sight better than some polygon games of old, while avoiding the colourful excesses of newer games like Guardian, It's just that it lacks a certain polish, a certain excitement.

ACTION! MAN!
Once the action begins you tend to forget the scenery though. Equipped with cannons, rockets and AAMs all concentration has to be on defending yourself and destroying the enemy. On the main flight screen the tactical window is flanked by an armour bar and a fuel bar, these being pretty self explanatory. In the top left-hand corner is a tactical map which shows your position in relation to objects and land masses that are reasonably near. In the centre is a current status box which indicates what weapon is being used and how much ammo you have. And finally, in the top right-hand corner, is a target window which is linked to a forward looking camera and acts as an approximate target viewfinder.

The controls are simple and easy to remember, becoming natural very quickly. The space bar toggles between weapons, of which you have three types: Cannon, Air-To-Ground Missile and Air-To-Air missile. The first two have to be aimed accurately, while the latter is a fire and forget device. As the game progresses you can collect more ammunition for the gun and carry increased missile loads. The other major controls are landing gear up-down and 'H' which lowers a winch.

The missions are carried out for money, which acts as a scoring mechanism and a way of increasing your combat capability in later levels - and believe me you need this. The first few levels of the game are merely for practice, as you soon discover when you try to tackle the other 27. You start off shooting up light armoured vehicles and the odd missile battery, but as you go on you encounter much tougher opposition in the shape of gunboats, known as Sharks, air interceptors that look like a cross between a Stealth Fighter and a Harrier and radar directed AA missiles, among others. The concentration of enemy also increases to ridiculous proportions, until you find yourself being hammered from all directions.

The missions are varied and involve rescuing friendly forces, having first destroyed the bunkers they are being imprisoned in, escorting reconnaissance aircraft, airlifting tanks from zone to zone which automatically move in and destroy the enemy and, of course, the good bit: search and destroy.

FLYMO
On an A1200 Zeewolf is quite rewarding to play. It doesn't break any new ground but is well worth a blast. Learning to fly the 'coptor and manoeuvring it into firing position takes time but you really do feel as though you have achieved something when it does what you want. This is using joystick control. If, however, you want to be a complete head-case: a genuine, certified, shoot-up-those paddy fields-and-smell-that-napalm-every-morning type of pilot you've got to try mouse control.

You need a good mouse, a good mouse mat and a sense of humour, but once you've mastered it you'll enjoy the game even more. I must admit that I'm still cutting grass whenever I try this but when I do get it right it seems much more natural, more intuitive than joystick control.

Overall Zeewolf is a fast (see boxout though), reasonably tough and involving heli-based shoot 'em up. Because of its polygons it's infinitely more realistic than the Strike games, but also a tad more boring - if that's the right word. Zeewolf comes on one disk, and even though it takes a couple of minutes to load it works like a dream after that.

Passwords are supplied after every four missions so once you master the controls and get to killin' some enemies you need not go through the mundane stuff again. In the final analysis I was always hungry for more, and that's what everyone expects from a game. Zeewolf is the first game from Binary Asylum, if they can match it or better it next time around they've got a bright future ahead.