Bedlam 2: Absolute Bedlam

Here we have the very model of a perfectly good game. It's supremely adequate in all departments, but it's been pipped to the post. Syndicate Wars has covered the same turf already - and done it all so much better into the bargain. Consequently, I have no alternative but to be negative about a game I'd much rather be nice to.

Players of either Bullfrog's trigger-happy little number or the original Bedlam will know the score here: carnage, destruction, explosions, destruction, violence and more carnage. If something is on the screen, it's very likely to explode should you pour enough ammunition into it. The basic task at hand is to take a team of one to three heavily-armed battle robot things (called RATTs) into various warzones to fulfil certain objectives. Rescue missions, intelligence gathering, equipment retrieval and so on make up the missions, but it wouldn't be amiss to say that every sortie pretty much comes down to laying waste to everything in your path.

At first I got the feeling that I wasn't so much playing the game as just holding down the fire button and letting the game play me (I don't get that - Ed). But a few missions in and I started to appreciate the strategy involved. Your weapons have limited reserves of ammo and reloads, but bonuses and power-ups aren't all that frequent, so you do have to start thinking about what you destroy.

It might have been more challenging to make the effects of your destructive tendencies return to haunt you. forcing you to really think about what you're doing. Radar stations could weaken enemy awareness, blowing up water tanks could mean that fires spread more easily and so on. A dynamic background. As it is, there's little to temper your weaponplay other than your supply of ammo.

To be fair, it does sort of grow on you. Even as I write there's a small part of me still wanting to go back and give it one more shot. Unlike Carmageddon, Quake or indeed, Syndicate Wars, it's not the kind of urge that's hard to ignore. As I said at the start, Absolute Bedlam is a perfectly good game. It just isn't Syndicate Wars, that's all.