Metal Law (Amiga)

Despite the name, this game doesn't feature the members of Manowar running about in underpants slaying posers with axes. It's actually about a futuristic cop of some kind who, rather than fighting crime, goes about the place shooting monsters.
The intro claims the game is set in the future, in a place called "Neo York". Is that a futuristic version of New York, or a futuristic version of York? Since the first couple of stages take place in a kind of castley, dungeony setting, I guess it must be York. But then the second set of stages are in a Giger-esque bio-world, so who knows? Or cares?
The two most immediate things that become obvious when you start to play Metal Law are the controls (because it commits the heinous, and all-too common Amiga platformer crime of having jump mapped to up on the d-pad), and the fact that the makers were obviously big SEGA fans.
The main character and the nonsensical plot are obviously based on SEGA's game ESWAT, and the game itself plays a fair bit like Shinobi, and the player's character can even crawl on his knees in the exact same manner as Joe Musashi.
Anyway, it's not a massively complex game: you go right, shoot the (impressively ugly) monsters and try not to fall down any bottomless pits. And there are lots of bottomless pits. And to make things even worse, Metal Law commits another grave platform game crime by having a lot of leaps of faith. You do start to recognise them after a couple of goes, but the situation isn't helped at all by fake-helpful arrows that lead to an unseen pit, nor by power ups that seem to have been placed to lure players to an annoying and cheap death.
Despite it's flaws, which are both numerous and large, Metal Law is still a lot of fun to play. Jumping around the stages, collecting power-ups, and shooting enemies are all enjoyable actiities in this game. It is just a shame about the stupid mistakes the makers made. There are definitely much worse Amiga platformers, though, so it's strange that this one seems to have been so forgotten.