Code name Hell Squad

Code name Hell Squad (previously called "Hellpigs" :-) was supposedly the last game on Amiga 500, which is not surprising given its release date - 2000! (one other famous 2D title of Y2K was Red Alert 2). It's a completely old-fashioned adventure game with some shooting thrown in and a ton of hilarious dialogues - for an action-adventure game freak like myself, this statement alone is a recommendation.

The story involves some wicked alien teenager getting his hands (tentacles?) on a space travel technology and spreading chaos throughout the Milky Way, just for the hell of it. But fear ye not, for here comes the U.S. government to the rescue, sending the group of four incredibly skilled, incredibly well equipped, WE-EAT-RAMBOS-FOR-FUCKING-BREAKFAST-DUDE soldiers. The game begins.

Even for an old-school adventure game, Hell Squad has some "innovative" features. First of all, we use joystick and keyboard only, which immediately sets the pace of the game into action-style instead of slow point-and-click. Next, we get to control four soldiers - one at a time - each having his own health bar. While we run around picking items and shooting creatures with one of them, the rest is put into some kind of desaturated suspension state and their health bar slowly replenishes. The inventory however is shared, so we can pick something up with one grunt than switch into another and immediately use the item somewhere on the other side of the map, which is extremely handy. Apart from that, there's just the casual stuff you'd expect to find in any other adventure game - picking objects, using objects, talking to people, etc. Every now and again, we shoot some enemies and bosses which is not very hard, since the ammo is unlimited.

The true magnet of this game is the humor. Almost every line of dialogue has that distinctive lighthearted adventure game humor in it, sometimes sprinkled with a heavy dose of good old American cursing. While playing, be sure to click around the screen and read the comments, some of them are downright hilarious. Even the intro and outro sequences - shot by an actual camera with real "actors" involved - are funny, in a B-movie way.

The graphics are nice enough, not mind-blowingly good or bad, but nice enough. Everything except for the characters has been hand-drawn, while the soldiers and NPCs were digitized, like in Mortal Kombat. The animation is moderately smooth, with many different movements captured, which looks much more realistic than, let's say, Phantasmagoria (shame on you, Roberta Williams). Also, the character gets smaller or larger on the screen, depending on how far/near he goes and in some locations he gets colorized, according to the available source of light. These quite professional touches blend with the absolutely crazy design of monsters and locations. Some of the creatures look really scary like the red sand monster encountered more or less halfway through the game, but on the other hand - just look at the dragon on the screenshot below. Does this thing look laughable or what? Same thing with the locations - some look impressive, some were just meant to be lame, like the mountain cave entrance which look like a cartoon ghost face.

While most of the old point-and-clicks feature some comedy here and there, Hell Squad is all about comedy. Yet, for a title released that late, on a long-since-dust-biting platform, the game is surprisingly well-written, presentable and immersing, even if it lacks that Broken Sword polish and impeccable quality. So, my suggestion to all of you old-school adventure game fans: well, it won't hurt to give it a try...