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WEREWOLF: THE LAST WARRIOR Just when you think we're running out of heroes, traditional villains become the objects of our books, movies, and even our video games. Data East's WEREWOLF: THE LAST WARRIOR takes the legendary man-wolf monster and transforms him into a would-be world-saver. An action/adventure scroller, WEREWOLF breaks many traditions, but misses being a great game on a few significant points. The packaging is worth a few comments before we discuss the game and gameplay. The senario is introduced by way of a 20-page 4"x5" comic book, wherein we learn of the crazed Dr. Faryan, who plans death, destruction, and domination for the Earth. But hope comes in the persona of Chief War Wolf, who has the power to be transformed into a super werewolf. It is War Wolf's destiny to oppose Faryan and his creations for the freedom of the Earth. You, of course, play War Wolf on his crusade against the creations and vicious playgrounds of Faryan, toward the eventual final battle for Earth. War Wolf begins the game as a human with jumping and striking abilities, and the power to generate and throw bolts of energy at his opponents. At many points, War Wolf can collect talismans that transform him into the Werewolf, and then the Super Werewolf, each with more power and strength. As a Werewolf, your arms become great metal blades, capable of hooking into the ceiling and allowing you to travel hand-over-hand across the roof. You also can scale sheer walls, and create a screen-shaking blast that harms all your enemies. When changed into the Super Werewolf, for a time you are the strongest character on the screen. Faryan's world is a twisty maze of many environments, forests, caves, factories, strange sewers, and post-catastrophe cities. You climb, crawl, jump, flip, and hook your way past enemies and traps. Play is intense, obstacles and opponents can drop in at any second, and their attacks are many and varied. You control War Wolf -- and his Werewolf identity -- through standard (and some not-so-standard) manipulation of your NES controller. The control pad handles movement to the right and left, as well as climbing up and down. START pauses and restarts, and SELECT lets you see the scoreboard while paused. The "A" button punches when pressed, or fires your special blast when held down and then released. The "B" button lets you jump. Jumping is the real failure of WEREWOLF. Because of sloppy control and interaction with the scenery, you spend much of your time fighting erratic movements. To climb a wall, you must first jump on it, after which you're able to climb up or down. Unfortunately, if you're jumping up or down near a wall, you often end up hanging on the wall, as if drawn there by a magnet. To get off a wall, you must push away from it with the control pad while you press the "B" button. It's often necessary to climb toward the top of a wall and jump to the top. This requires a twisted, non-intuitive move of jumping straight out from the wall, and then whipping back up to the top. While it may sound simple enough, you often find yourself stuck back against the original surface. These are frustrating occurrences that the programmers should've avoided to make the game much more enjoyable. The graphics are fine, with cinematic between-level effects and sound. The sound effects and music are passable; not among the best available. After a couple of hours of playing, I often leave a game whistling or humming the theme, but I can't even bring WEREWOLF's to mind now. Puzzles don't feature highly in WEREWOLF, but there are many puzzling aspects to some traps and obstacles. However, the solution to many of these is too often an overlooked hint in the manual rather than a fathomable observation. If you become stuck, reread the manual and try out everything in your current predicament. The Werewolf as a hero is an intriguing idea. We've seen many classic monsters in video games: Dracula in the CASTLEVANIA series, the recent FRANKENSTEIN, and even a mummy or two in other programs. But those were villians to be avoided or conquered. Although the blade-arms deviate from the traditional interpretation of the Werewolf legend, Data East is to be commended for trying something new in characters. Despite there being much to recommend in WEREWOLF, I find myself stopping short of doing so because of some poorly designed control functions. If this sort of thing doesn't bother you, by all means, buy WEREWOLF. And if the scenario really intrigues you, you might want to test drive this one in any case. WEREWOLF: THE LAST WARRIOR is published and distributed by Data East.