Saturday, March 8, 2014

#91: Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf

GET TO THE CHOPPA!
On the surface Desert Strike seems like a propaganda game designed to keep US morale high for the ongoing war in Iraq. No, not the recently ongoing war in Iraq, the old one. The game is very careful to not call out Saddam by name (his character is called 'The Madman') but it was very clear when it first came out that this was a game about Operation Desert Storm.

The game puts you in the role of a chopper pilot running various missions. Fly over here, kill a radar site. Fly over there, kill a power station. That sort of thing. It plays a lot like a sandbox game like Grand Theft Auto, though. In the first mission you have 4 different quests. Then there's a 5th hidden quest that unlocks from the 4th one. There are other things you can do on the side too, like rescue more dudes. One of the dudes is even a MIA copilot you can use in future missions to increase your gunning skill. Yes, a sidequest to increase your stats.

Watch out for the little mans!
The controls are actually pretty smooth, and the graphics are really good for an open world scroller on the SNES. Really, really good. I was surprised today at how good they are, and I remember thinking it was really good back when I was a kid too.

It's not just the graphics and the controls. The missions make sense for a war in the desert. You have lots of flexibility on what order you want to do things, and the tactical map is a thing of beauty. You can scroll through to get locations on all sorts of things. Ammo pick-ups. Fuel. Enemy locations. Targets. Combat lets you use 3 different types of ammo!

I'd forgotten this game existed, but as soon as I started playing it again it all came back to me. In a good way. I am surprised at how good this game is.

Rating: S-

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