Green Beret

Copyright : Imagine | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

You are an elite soldier, one of the best, your name is Green Hat. A major war is underway and as one the countries finest you have been sent into action by the Green Berets to rescue the Prisoners Of War from the enemy, armed at first only with a knife.
It?s going to be one of those days.

Graphics

Green Beret is one of those arcade action games that most true retrogamers will remember either hearing something about or playing back in the days when taking 20 minutes to load a game was considered fast. I must admit this is one game that stood firm in my CPC collection and was played on more than one occasion, sadly I personally only got around to loading it once or twice but my friends loved it.
Graphics wise the game is very rich and is everything you would expect from a good software house like Imagine. Colours are varied and not over the top with a wide range of enemies attacking you from every corner of the screen (mounties, army men, civilians and more) who all look very different from one another. At first you would be forgiven for thinking that game is very 2 dimensional in the fact that the levels hardly change, as the game progresses this becomes a little different as the backgrounds become more detailed and the whole level of play is altered. There are no problems with collision detection, no graphical glitches and to be honest it even looks better than the Commodore 64 version as the characters appear more rounded than they are jagged in the C64 release, see for yourself over at Lemon64.

Sound

While the C64 had music courtesy of Martin Galway the Amstrad CPC version had nothing, something that I personally felt more than a little cheated by when the game finally loaded for the first time that rainy afternoon. The in-game sounds on the other hand make up for the lack of music with a nice alarm sounding as the game starts, plenty of but kicking action noises as you scoll along the screen and the occasional surprise here and there.

Gameplay

Gameplay is much the same as every other version of the game you have played, simply get yourself from one side of the screen to the other without being shot or stabbed by the oncoming enemies. The problems from all other conversions also plague the Amstrad CPC version, while back in the day you played this game for the first time you might not have noticed it?s now apparent from the moment the game starts. Our central hero is easily killed as the control system remains un-responsive (more so if you use the joystick) and the scrolling screen that only refreshes when you reach the edge soon becomes annoying.
Green Beret was never an easy game when it was first released but today it has become slightly more difficult and frustrating than before. As we here at CPC Zone review a game because of how good it was in the day (comparing it to todays games is pointless) we have to give Green Beret a good score and would highly recommend it to those that have never played it or need a challenge.