 
Trogan is on the loose. With his army of evil ghouls he's over-running the land with evil and disharmony.
Shock..horror..and there's more...he dwells in his Crypt guarded by the meanest and deadliest of his followers.
As Stryker, mighty warlock and master of spells, you have to enter into the Crypt, collect the sixteen pieces of the parchment of truth and defeat the evil incarnate. Trogan. thus ridding the land of evil once and for all - or at least until another saviour-type game is released. Stryker isn't a slash'n'slay hero, depending much more on magic and courage to save the day. There's loads of power ups and weaponry/magic to be collected within the crypt, but Trogan's evil disciples serve only to hinder your efforts. There's five levels to get through before thinking about what Trogan looks, or fights like, but his hordes of meat-heads, skulls, skeletons and mutants are enough to see anyone toiling away for ages... especially since Stryker is initially equipped with six lives. The game is played on the top screen area with the bottom holding the game status/info: there are six meters measuring such things as parchment collected, energy, magic, combat strength. There's also a level indicator, a score, and number of lives remaining indicator. Of the five levels, level one is the simplest with each getting progressively more complex. The end-of-level guardians are pretty mean, but not invincible if a few basic techniques are followed. As a bonus, extra lives are usually gained after destroying the mutant guards. If not in possession of spells or weapons, the quickest way to kill enemies is with the lower stab -crouching down and stabbing into the base of the baddies. This slows the game down as every so often you must stop and crouch. This is lessened if all of the power ups are collected, but sometimes to do so requires more effort than is really worthwhile.  
This is, to all intents and purposes, a Switchblade clone, but is it better than the original? Well, it's as good as. but has lost a little in the originality department. If you have Switchblade, then unless you've finished it, Stryker may be a little too similar - who knows you may like it better. One thing's for sure, at budget price you won't be wasting any money. The programmers of Stryker are the same team that worked on the CPC version of Switchblade, and the likeness is one which hits home straight away. The techno-underground futuristic scenario has given way to a magical and mystical labyrinth filled with wizardry and spell-casting. In fact, underneath the cosmetics. Stryker is a lot like Switchblade, but there are a few subtle differences. One regards the PLUS machine, where there's lots more colour and some pretty terrific displays, such as graduations, only previously seen on cart games. This new technological breakthrough is possible because of the newly discovered system calls that use the extra hardware on PLUS machines. These calls access the extra graphics capability of the PLUS chips through the software. This doesn't affect the graphics on normal CPCs, but the graphics are still better than those in Switchblade due to the better use of colour. What is affected though, is speed: the game runs faster on a PLUS than it does on a standard CPC. This speed difference is marginal and during the game cannot really be detected - but Stryker is slightly faster on the PLUS! This feature was noticed when we ran the game side by side on the two machines to check out the difference in graphics. CPC ATACK!
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