Phewwwwwwwww ratatatatatatatatatatatatat, weeeeeeeeeeeeeee booom! Not that I'm a violent sort by nature, of course. GOT THAT? (Scrunch!) Good. But I do like a good shoot 'em up. It lets me release my more ... er ... anti-social cravings. I mean, hooooooooooooooooo blammmo! If it weren't for a good shoot 'em up now and then, what would we all be doing? Pillaging and plundering and looting like Visigoths, probably. Perpetrating untold acts of unimaginable cruelty and violence, certainly. Or at least watching Neighbours.
    But society will be a much safer place with Cybernoid II around. This is a really cracking shoot 'em up. Those poor saps who never saw the original Cybernoid (which was to Exolon roughly as a BMW is to a rollerskate) will be saying, "Huh! The old boffer's always saying that! Every game's the best thing since the toasted tea cake. He's really gone over the top this time. Let's go and buy Ninja Ghostbusters - that's only £1.99." To which I say - PAH!
    Of course, by the time you read this, Cybernoid II will be number one in the charts. If you played the prequel, you'll know what to expect: the puzzle-solving megablast that was Cybernoid, but refined further, made harder and with neater graphics than you'll find this side of the 16-bit. You'll need speed of reaction, speed of thought and nimbler fingers than Paul Daniels.
    Mos readers will of course know this already, as they'll have bought the October ish, read the preview and played the playable demo that appeared on the front cover. (So what are you doing reading this review then? Go on, clear off!) But for the few who have missed out and are wondering, as ever, what the fuss is all about, here are the wizard extra features that Cybernoid II has in store, with subtitles for the hard of hearing. (Eh? Ed)
    First, your Cybernoid super-spanky blaster ship has a few useful new weapon systems, some of which come ready fitted (you access them by pressing 1 to 5) and others of which you'll pick up along the way. 'Edge-following bombs' are not fans of U2 (as far as I know, that is) but hug the terrain before blowing up whatever's at the other end of the screen. Smart bombs you'll be familiar with from countless other games, and time bombs are even more useful: plant them next to the nasty, leg it and watch from afar as it disintegrates with a wazzy new Defender-type blast.
    Your aliens too are a mite more advanced, having learnt perhaps from their mistakes the last time you tangled with them. There are baiter aliens which appear when you have been faffing around on screen for too long. There are armoured emplacements which can only be destroyed when open, and when destroyed suddenly spit out more aliens. Alien waves, before completely predictable, now alternate on the same screen - nasty, eh? And so on.
    So what you're getting, in the end, is a souped-up, all-new version of the bestest blaster we've seen on the beermat this year. If you went for Cybernoid Un, as the French would say, Deux will be music to your ears. If you didn't, it'll be Shakin' Steven's Greatest Hits. The choice, mon ami, c'est a toi!
    
    Many thanks to Jim Grimwood for typing this up

Ratings given by other magazines

8/10      9/10    Crash Review ---

Info supplied by the SPOT*ON database

YS Cross-references
		Cybernoid II/Hewson	YS34	PRE
		Cybernoid II (in Christmas Collection)	YS47	93
		Cybernoid II (in The YS Complete Guide To Shoot-'em-ups Part I)	YS55	92
		Cybernoid II (in Cecco's Collection)	YS56	91