Download Crime Wave

Before I get into reviewing this game, let me start by admitting that side-scrolling action shoot-'em-ups aren't my forte. They go to fast for my old tired eyes and all the different enemies running around, combined with constant trigger-action tend to make me nervous. Nevertheless I believe that being open minded is a virtue and although curiosity killed the cat, I really wanted to try something besides adventure games for a change. So, I opted for Crime Wave, a 1990 street violence, gore splattering, mind numbing sidescroller from Access Software.

It all starts with the presidents’ daughter being kidnapped by some men of low moral standing. The chief of police is desperate and calls in his best free-lance gunslinger, Luke McCabe. This vigilante has sunglasses the size of Luxemburg and a passion for shooting, so he's extremely cut out for the job. It all starts at the train yard...

You take control of Luke, (badly) dressed in a red-and-white jogging suit and his colossal sunglasses that make Sony Crockets' pale in comparison. And, true to the genre, loads and loads of baddies come running, shooting and dodging and throwing all kinds of stuff. There are three levels of difficulty to chose from and the lowest settings starts out pretty easy, but gets hectic pretty soon. At the advanced level, you'll have to hold down the fire button non-stop and pray! The enemies get tougher the further you advance and all kinds of weirdoes appear, from shuriken throwing ninjas to fatso's with flamethrowers and the occasional mechanical contraption. The game play consists of shooting everything that moves, picking up a scarce power-up or bonus-live and carry on.

The graphics are pretty decent. All characters are digitized from real-life actors, but due to the low resolution the quality never excels. The in-game animations are nice, especially if your a guy in the middle of puberty, since the dame you've got to rescue will appear frequently in a skimpy (but tasteful) red evening gown-thingy! Backgrounds are nice and colorful but the distinction between them and your targets is big enough, so no problem there. One thing that sets this game apart from others in its genre is its abundant goriness. You've got a weapon capable of firing both bullets and rockets, and shooting the latter at your enemies has a rather disorganizing effect on their remains. Limbs and blood flying all around made this game illegal in Germany at the time (actually, lots of games featuring violence were banned by the German government in those day) but it can be fun to watch your enemies explode in a fountain of blood en body parts!

As for the sound, I was pretty disappointed. The grunts and gunshots are mediocre at best, and although the intro featured a catchy tune, during the entire game not one song was played. Usually a speedy, driving, motivational backgrounder can really improve the overall stress level of the game, but after playing for ten minutes of only 'Urgh, bang, bang, booooom' the noises get rather irritating.

In conclusion: this game is nothing special. The campy theme is nice, as are Luke’s sunglasses but other then that It's a shoot-‘em-up with an above average amount of gore, decent graphics, crappy sound and absolutely no music. It can be fun to play for a while, and by all means do so, if you like this kind of game, but there's no reason to get all worked up for it.

This game works flawlessly in DOSBox, but also runs in XP with Windows 95 compatibility mode on. In XP you won't have any sound, but you really won't miss a lot. If you run it without the Win95-setting it runs extremely slow!

Reviewed by: Reup / Screenshots by: Reup / Uploaded by: Reup

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