Damage
UK EXCLUSIVE

By Neil Bullock

Hmm. Why is it always me that happens to get to review things exclusively? Probably because I'm the one who has to say goodbye to good money buying games to review for WOA. If you value our opinions, please go to the Trogsoft website and let us know if you are willing to pay for WOA using the WOA Vote page. We're not intending to charge unless a huge majority of voters are willing to pay, but think about it. It will mean we get even more exclusives, and you get the benefit of our opinions.

Damage is a game for over 18s. That's probably a good thing since the game's subtitle is "The sadistic butchering of humanity". Don't worry though, it's not as graphic as the title makes out. The game's plot follows...

Michael Modelcitizen was created to be the perfect human (you may have guessed it's set in the future). However, Michael found that, even though he was the worlds most popular rockstar, and he had everything, it wasn't enough. And one day, Michael Modelcitizen disappeared, and after years of searching unsuccesfully, he was presumed dead.

Mike Massacre was sat in his throne in the basement of a scientists building. He broke out, feeling he knew the meaning of his life, and the meaning of other lives...

You take control of Mike Massacre from this point. You have to guide him around the city, stealing weapons, ammo, and killing innocent members of the public, fending off the police, armed forces and various other people trying to stop you.

I bet a lot of you have images conjoured in your mind (if you haven't already seen screenshots somewhere) of first person perspective destruction and pointless slaughter of innocent human life (yes, I am trying to make this as gruesome as possible

But it's nothing like that. It's a 2D viewed-from-the-side game, which really isn't all that gruesome at all. You do see red pixels, which are created to look lifelike, but unless you start using your imagination, they're not.

The sprites are, however, very well animated, but far too small to show any graphic violence of any particular detail. That being said, it is very smooth, fluent and there are a lot of animation frames too. Thousands!

You start with a baseball bat carelessly left there by the scientist. You pick this up and exit the pathetic hell hole you start in. Walking around, you can press Up on the joystick to examine things, and enter into rooms using the provided doors (seems logical, doesn't it?)

Upon getting outside, you can start killing people. At first, you just have to people with your baseball bat, and you're fairly safe on the first screen, killing people at random, as your Kill Counter increments. It's when you get to the second screen that the action starts. Someone shouts for help, and calls the police and they start appearing from the edges of the screen with the intention of ending your life.

Your body is very much stronger than theirs and as such, you can stay out in the cross fire for a while. You are informed of how your body is progressing using the text scrolling feature at the bottom of the screen, where all messages and speech are presented to you.

You select weapons using the function keys. Of course, you have to pick up a weapon first, and you can do this relatively early into the game. There's a conveniently placed shotgun in one of the dustbins which you encounter in the game. And inside one of the shops, you can get some ammo for it, after robbing the place of all it's money.

There are many different parts of the city you can visit, and also various shops you can go into, rob, and find lots of nice weapons to aid in your killing spree. You can even get to the army barracks, but without lots of ammo, and oodles of weapons, it's probably not recommended.

The game has obviously being worked on for ages, and a lot of effort has gone into the animation, and the game in general. It has it's good and bad points, and I thoroughly recommend it, either as a stress reliever or just if you feel like killing people, but don't fancy getting thrown in prison.

Supplier: Epic Marketing
Verdict: Brilliant stress reliever!
Score: 91%

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