If anyone dies find Beachheads, any version will do as long as it is for PC.

I think there is three versions and 2000 is my favorite but I would be thrilled to have any of the three. If anyone does find this, it would really make my day as I have been searching for months for this game.

If you've seen Saving Private Ryan, you might agree that the first scene in the World War II film stands out from the rest. The scene lasts around 25 minutes, and it's an incredibly visceral, visually graphic re-creation of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. The action takes place from the perspective of the American troops who storm Omaha Beach in armored landing crafts, only to meet with a deadly barrage of mines and enemy fire. WizardWorks, the same publisher that brought you Deer Hunter, tries to capture the intensity of a WWII beach attack in BeachHead 2000, a loose remake of an old Commodore 64 shooter. For a short time, it may prove to be a fairly entertaining diversion. However, BeachHead 2000's limited gameplay won't hold your attention for long.



In BeachHead 2000, you're a lone turret gunner defending a stretch of beach that's under siege. You view the beach from a first-person perspective and aim using the mouse. Your turret is equipped with a machine gun, a howitzer cannon, and guided surface-to-air missiles. You also have a handgun to use as a last-ditch defense. At the beginning of each level, you're given a limited amount of ammo for each gun. Much of the strategy of the game comes from deciding when and where to employ this precious supply of ammo. Fortunately, supply aircraft make frequent parachuted drops of ammo and health. But to obtain these, you've got to shoot the drop-package itself. Attempting to nail these drop-offs with anything but a machine gun poses a considerable - and at times frustrating - challenge. Even if you get the extra ammo, you may still come up a few missiles or rounds short, which can make completing the level nearly impossible.



BeachHead 2000's graphics are OK sometimes, but pretty rough in certain respects. The enemy choppers, APCs, landing craft, tanks, and bombers are rendered in 3D with real-time lighting effects - and they actually look decent. The problem is that many of the units pop up out of nowhere, almost as if the game were rendering them late. The infantry troops don't look nearly as good: The foot soldiers look acceptable, but only from far away as they file out of the armored landing crafts. As they draw closer, their choppy animation and 2D photo-scanned faces look silly.

BeachHead 2000's gameplay is fast-paced and straightforward. It plays similarly to old arcade shooters like Operation Wolf and Terminator 2, only the screen doesn't ever scroll in any direction. The levels steadily increase in difficulty until it seems as if they won't get any harder. After that, you just continue on and rack up as many points as you can by gunning down the enemy. You can't actually win. The game grows old quickly, as taking out the stream of enemies in each level becomes repetitive. Even the enemy units themselves soon become predictable, as the ground and air units seem to repeat the same maneuvers over and over again. Also, although your inability to move makes sense in the context of the game, it makes the game much less engaging.

BeachHead 2000 isn't horrible, though it's not ambitious at all. It has moments that can be satisfying, and the gameplay is quick and easy to learn. If you're a casual game player looking to let off a little steam in a WWII environment, you might enjoy BeachHead 2000 for a little while. But the game isn't suitable for anyone else.

By Tim Soete, GameSpot
Posted Jul 25, 2000 4:22 am GMT

BeachHead 2002 is an updated version of BeachHead 2000, a repetitive arcade-style shooter that lets you assume the role of a lone gunner trying to fend off a beach invasion. The new game takes the same approach, but replaces the beach environment with some rolling hills. The few improvements it includes do little to address the flaws of the original game, and since the new game is just more of the same endless waves of enemies, it can't really be recommended even to those who might have enjoyed Beach Head 2000 in some way.



BeachHead 2002 gets old quickly, primarily due to its premise--you're stuck in a bunker with a few guns and limited ammunition, and there's an army of infinite size on the way to kill you. It might make a good plot for an action film, but it's not much fun as a game. In this situation, there is no hope of retreat, since you can only rotate about a fixed position and shoot at moving targets. There is also no hope of victory, since the game will just continually throw more enemies at you in the form of tanks, armored personnel carriers, helicopters, airplanes, and soldiers. There is very little rhyme or reason to how these targets appear and move--the units have no obvious objective other than to destroy your bunker, and they come from all directions, giving the impression that the invasion has already taken place long ago, and you're the only survivor. Since you can't move and you can't win, your only goal is to do better than you did the game before and maybe gain access to a new weapon or enemy unit to shoot at.



By Trey Walker, GameSpot
Posted Feb 14, 2002 2:08 am GMT

Robbeh: I've been informed there will be no PC version of GTA IV