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Domark, £8.95 cass
Author: Derek Brewster

Set among the stars, Codename Mat II pits man against Alien in an epic struggle for superiority. Now that he's been given a new ship after Codename Mat, Mat is back bashing up the same old creepies as before, the Myons. This time they're trying their best to destroy the grids that supply vital energy to Earth. The energy is derived from Karillium mined on the planet Vesta deep within the Myon Zones. Impr-essed with the way you dealt with the last outbreak of Mvon nastiness, Earth has supplied you with the latest in military technology. Centurion II, a high powered and extremely sophis-ticated spacecraft.
The idea is that you should destroy the Myon space fighters that are harming the essential satellite links in the energy grid. If you manage to kill all the Myons in the sector then you get a rest from alien zapping and the game's strategy elements come into play. Awarded a limited amount of time units to repair and replace damage to your ship and the energy grid, you must spend it wisely in trying to decide what is best to repair. How badly the satellites have been damaged depends on how long you've taken to wipe out the Myon fighters.
As waves progress, the Myons, obviously a miffed by your blasting their fleets to little bits, get more vicious. There are eight different waves, each wave employing different tact-ics. The first fleet are fighters and are more than a bit apath-etic, only attacking when you
seek them out. The second lot are more a kind of galactic ex-ocet seeking you out like a guided missile, not actually fir-ing, just giving it the old kam-ikaze run into your hull. The third screen's aliens are more thou-ghtful I and tend to employ the tactic of circling around you before striking. They also use cloaking devices making them invisible on the main screen.
The complexity of your ship means it's very easy to damage, a feature the Myons seem to rely on heavily. A status window constantly keeps you updated on the position of your ship with lines of text informing of any system damage. Luckily, if an essential ship's system is dam-aged and you can t wait until the end of the wave, you have two droids in your employ. Assign-ing them to a particular task may mean waiting for up to 15 min-utes, and while the system is under repair it is totally inoper-ative. Should a droid be harmed then the other droid can repair his fellow toiler.
You are supplied with three sets of scanners. Long range, short range and battle com-puter. Apart from their range, their is little difference between the two scanners. Showing a 2D plan view of a sphere with your ship in the centre, the scanner also highlights the position of any aliens. When the aliens are really up close, it's wisest to use the battle computer. This device is intelligent and has two modes of display. On automatic it tracks the fighter nearest to your ship: manual mode allows you to track your own Myon. When a Myon fighter is in your immed-iate vicinity it appears in the main screen, a panoramic 3D view through the cockpit window.
To travel between different quadrants when chasing after Myons you need to use your trusty ion engine. Looking at the quadrant chart, you need to estimate the best warp factor and warp angle. Tripping on the warp engines is a bit dodgy if you have a dicky shield unit as micro particles threaten to pen-etrate the hull because of the enormous speed of travel. If the warp starts to harm the Centu-rion then you can always abort it.
Centurion 11 is supplied with two weapon systems, plasma and laser. Plasma guns are slow to recharge and tne time they take to reach their target wou-ldn't win any medals either. Their only advantage over laser power is they don't overheat and explode. Throughout your battle a status box indicates how dire your present position is by informing you if it's condition blue, green, yellow or red. You die if any essential system is dead or if all the satellites are destroyed.

Control keys:
in addition to directional and firing controls (joystick), some 14 keys are required.

CRITICISM
Before I start it would only be fair to say that if
you liked Codename Mat you're sure to enjoy Mat II since the scenario and challenge holds a great deal more depth than its predecessor while retaining the same game format. But if you weren't over keen on Mat I, regarding Mat II you'll be in the same boat as me, bored stiff. The game cannot really help but suffer comparison with Starion because of the similarity in game ideas, large alien zap sessions followed by some mind work, and I'm afraid Codename Mat II comes off worse in the comparison. The graphics would have been acceptable a year back but I'm afraid visually the game hasn't progressed at all since Mat I. The strategic elements are interesting but too much emphasis is put on the alien blasting bit. It takes far too long to reach the end of a wave. Setting the warp co-ordinates is clumsy with the computer working in polar co-ordinates Overall I really couldn't recom-mend this unless you were s big fan of the first gams, otherwise...

Code Name Mat was one of the early major games to be released on the Amstrad. When it came out for the Spectrum it was regarded as state of the art, deservedly so as well. Code Name Mat 2 is not the fresh new idea that its prede-cessor was, in fact there are quite a lot of similarities be-tween the two games. The Graphics are nothing like as fast or detailed as say Starion, but the gameplay is pretty good. The player is under quite a lot of pressure, especially when the enemy numbers start to incre-ase and you have to repair the damage to your ship A pretty exciting game and welt worth buying if you are a space strategy shoot em up fan without Code Name Mat the first.

The graphics in this game are well up to scratch if perhaps just a little bit slow. What I really enjoyed about Code Name Mat 2 was the scenario. Once I had learnt to control my ship and could get stuck into the battle everything seemed very realistic. As the battle hotted up I found myself stretched to the limit trying to keep the nasties away from the satellites while at the same time doing the necessary repair work on my ship. An exhilarating and worthwhile game.

Presentation 68%
Nothing amazing, though some very nice artwork with the packaging

Graphics 73%
Not much change since Mat I

Sound 45%
Almost non-existent, and what it does use isn't outstanding

Playability 69%
Lots of controls makes it hard to get into, but fun once you have

Addictive Qualities 75%
The strategic elements combined with arcade offer plenty to do. but reviewers' opinions were mixed as to long term appeal

Value for Money 72%
A pound dearer than Starion and, though being a good game, is a mite overpriced.

Overall 72%
A good mixture of shoot em up and strategy, likely to appeal most people