You're Wild Bill, pilot of the Dragonfly helicopter and you have a mission: to ensure the safe arrival of the A.W.E. Striker at its destination. The Striker, though, lias two problems: it bumps into things and :t fails down holes, and neither is veiy good for it. There are also lots of nasty Cobia forces out there just waiting to blast anything into little pieces. Across the bottom of the screen, where your score is shown, is a status panel informing you of the condition of the Dragonfly and the Striker. In the upper part is the horizontally scrolling playing which is centered around your helicopter There ate several levels to the game, each more difficult than the last, but still very similar in style of play. Strewn about the landscape are holes that must be bridged and barriers to be destroyed so mat the Striker can exit at the end of the level. Fortunately there are sections of bridges covering some of the holes, but even so there are more holes than bridges. You therefore have to carry bridge sections from place to place and make sure the Striker gets through. Any barriers that you come across must be shot to pieces or bang goes the Striker. That's about it: you hurtle around blasting enemies and protecting the Striker. Considering the speed at which the landscape scrolls it's still remarkably fast. It's a pity as much effort wasn't put into the graphics as was put into the scrolling - they're lacking in both detail and colour. Sound is just a handful of effects and there are no tunes.    
Action Force is one of those games that's frustrating, but lor the wrong reasons Level two is incredibly tight on timing to destroy the first obstacle before the Striker gets to it and that tends to annoy rather than make you play again. At the start of the game and between levels a message squelches onto the screen at an yawnfully slow rate. They're interesting the first time, but in the middle of a game the last thing that you want is a tedious delay before you go to next bit. £9 is lot to ask for this sort of thing. FIRST DAY TARGET : Complete level two GBH, AA | 
