The main objective of the game is advancing through Poseidon's palace, finally reaching the Sea King in person: in between, you'll find that every room has a different challenge to offer, and, at times, some bosses eager to whack Dust to bits. Some rooms involve a simple slaughtering of monsters, by throwing knives at them, or avoidance of devilish traps and obstacles; others are puzzle rooms where your brain will be more important than any muscle. The designers really had a lot of creativity, and spent it all designing the game: variety is one of the keywords, you'll never find a challenge similar to a previous one, and some are even original. You will be on a strange boat in a section, in the last part of the second of the three "acts" the game is divided into you can take different paths, each with his own challenges, and for a while you will be even transformed in a super-human creature, too. No fear to be bored.

The character of Dust is made of a small bunch of pixels, really too small, maybe: I won't be surprised if you had difficulties in spotting him in the small screenshots here. But don't worry: with the exception of a couple where the same red color used for him predominates, he is always clearly visible on the beautiful and abstract-looking backgrounds. The entire game has a surreal and sometimes disturbed look.
If Dust is sometimes hard to come for the eye, he's certainly not for the ear! In fact, he talks a lot through very good speeches which, due to his harsh voice, have a definite Duke Nukem flavour.
Controls are standard Game Factory fare (you can reconfigure them, though): arrows, Shift, Ctrl. In some rooms full of monsters to kill, you can use the numeric keypad to make Dust move and shoot independently, like in Robotron and Smash TV.

You have unlimited lives, which is coherent since Dust is an immortal; for this reason, reaching the end won't take long. The difference lies in how many times you die in the process. You can't be slaughtered too much if you want to see the entire ending sequence. Here lies the real challenge: finding a way, in every room, to die the less possibile times, if not at all. Very good replayability here. There are rooms looking semi-impossibile at first, becoming a breeze after you find the best strategy to pass them; I find this very gratifying.
But there's a stain. Beware of the screen before the final confrontation, since it's quite buggy. Try to stay in the center because, if you are on the edges, you could "exit" the screen, with no possibility to move, and thus be forced to restart the entire game. Shame for such a fault, at the end of the game too!
Aside from that problem, Wrath of the Sea King is very recommended.

Everything, from the cross-hairs, to the animation, looks and feels very reminiscent to Liero. It is kind of sad that such a talented author didn't take time to add some more innovative ideas. That isn't to say that it's straight rip-off material, though, as you will see if you read further. Also, he's ripping off a very good game, which means that the quality of even a clone is off the scale.

The sound, as mentioned earlier, was hilarious but inappropriate for younger ears. I'm talking about some famous 4-letter words as well as some explicit instructions on where and and how to stick a pipe. It's basically South Park in it's evil rabbit form. Definitely not for the faint of heart. It should be noted that you can reduce the amount of language in the options menu if it really offends you.

If you've played Liero, you'll be right at home here. The controls are similar (I don't remember them right now. Just press buttons on your keyboard and you'll find 'em.), as is the interface and game play. There is at least one thing that sets this apart from Liero, and that's its short-range weapon: the chainsaw. If you think that pumping a worm full of lead is fun, wait 'til you try ripping a bunny with metal! It's definitely a thrill. Most of the other weapons are different from Liero and cool as well, but, with only six guns, it suffers where quantity is concerned.

The place that really differentiates this from Liero, as well as Liero's other clones, is the graphics. They are just plain awesome. The flamethrower looks like it has flames, and you can see the chainsaw spinning. The ground is also more than a bland screen of brown. You can see the grains quite clearly, and the rocks look pseudo-3D. I believe it should be noted that your character(s) look suspiciously like Jazz Jackrabbit. Very nice indeed.

The Bottom Line: If you like Liero (and have somebody to play it with), you should probably download this. It's, without a doubt, fun, but it "borrows" too much from Liero, in my opinion.

Some missions have you trying to take out terrorists by your lonesome, and in some you are part of a squad; in some you even take the role of the terrorists. There are no specific intructions as to what your goal is for every mission, but it's pretty easy to figure out in most cases: Just kill all the baddens.

The 3D graphics in X Operations are nothing special when compared to most other games of it's sort, but they get the job done, and they run very smoothly and animate well.