Amok looks totally unlike anything you've ever seen. Rather than rely 
on texture-mapped polygons to create the landscape, developers Lemon 
have sought a different route. Using the Saturn's VDP1 video 
processing chip, they've created a very realistic landscaping routine 
rather like a low resolution version of those fractal landscapes that 
were all the rage years ago. The move away from polygons means that 
there's absolutely no clipping in any tangible form and also 
smoothness isn't an issue. Amok features a pretty decent control 
system too. It's rather like Doom in that your frog-like machine can 
walk, run and strafe left and right. Everything is logically placed on 
the control pad, and the old Doom tactics of using rotate left and 
strafe to circle around targets, which is also great for dodging enemy 
targets. The meat and drink of the game is similar in execution to the 
Strike series. Every mission is split into a series of smaller 
sub-tasks, completion of which allows you to move on to the next part. 
What is good though is that if you fail some of the sub-tasks, it 
radically alters what happens next. The mission can be salvaged if you 
make a cock-up, which puts it one up on the Strike games.

The look of the game suggests that this is something different, and to 
be honest, it may not appeal to everyone. At first. Give it a bit of 
time though and you should find that Amok is a very deep game, far 
more involving than the majority of Saturn releases at this time.

7 OUT OF 10

reviewed by
Stephen Fulljames