grimjack2's Full Review: Beach Head 2000 for Windows
If you are one of those epinion reviewers who base their rating on how short a review is, please don't judge this one too harshly. If this review is so short, it is because this game is so simple! There is only so much a person could write about it.
It seems unusual to me to make a game from the Nazi side, but I can't help but feel that it looks like you are firing on Allied troops during D-day. In this game you are the lone defender of something so important that endless waves of enemies are trying to kill you to get at it. You are armed with a pistol, a machine gun, a cannon, guided missiles (just what era is this game supposed to be taking place?), and the rare artillery strike. The enemies consist of soldiers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, helicopters, bombers and fighter jets.
This game could be considered a quick and simple diversion. Like some of the great games like Tetris, it does gradually get harder and harder without changing its basic premise. Simple and redundant seem to be two words that often describe console games, so I am very surprised that this was written as a computer game first, and as far as I can tell has yet to be ported for any console system.
The graphics are poor which is disappointing considering how little processor power the game probably uses. The soldiers don't look too bad, until they get up real close. They are very 2-dimensional looking. The planes don't look at all like they exist in 3d as they fly in front of your bunker. The tanks and okay, and have a somewhat realistic motion as they come up over your hill. The helicopters and planes look believable as they crash into the earth trailing black smoke on the way down. Actually the explosions, like the soldiers, look okay unless they are really close. Then they look pixelated. All of your shots look like little spheres of energy. I've read somewhere that they look like nerf balls, but I never saw it.
The controls are very unintuitive, and make little sense. You move the mouse to spin back and forth and click the left button to shoot. The right button does nothing. You press the spacebar to switch between the machine gun and your cannon. In order to shoot a missile you press 'M', and for an artillery strike, you press 'A'. I don't understand why the right mouse button cannot fire a different weapon, or switch guns or something. Aiming is extremely difficult. I don't think I'll ever get it down perfectly. When the men first come out of the landing craft they are bunched together, and it is easy to get a lot at once. Once they hit the beach they begin to spread out, and it is far more difficult.
You are only given a small amount of ammo to complete each mission. If you miss one of the heavy vehicles with the cannon, you are certain to fail. If you run out of missiles, trying to take down the helicopters and bombers with the machine gun can only be done through sheer luck. As another illogical portion of the game, your allies periodically drop either a box of ammo or health with a parachute. These little boxes are so hard to hit, that it really isn't worth the effort unless it is falling right near your turret.
This game was only $20 when it first came out, and is now probably half that. It may sound like you can't go wrong purchasing it, but actually you can. There are older games in the bargain bins that are much better, and Serious Sam is still on the shelves as new for $20, and is also simple redundant fun.
And since there are some turrets on either side of you, why don't they seem willing to help?
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