Fire Force

STORY / GAMEPLAY
You are a redneck warrior (much like Rambo) and you have twelve missions (in different territories like the jungle, the urban places, the desert etc) to choose from and accomplish, including the assassination of a Middle East Officer, the destruction of ground-to-air missile pods and the demolition of a bridge in a tropical war zone (and more). You equip yourself with a few weapons such as the M-16 and AK-47 rifles or the M-60 machine gun, rocket launchers, grenades, explosives and so on. At the beginning of each mission, a helicopter is deploying you in the "hot" area and you have a certain amount of time to complete your mission and reach the extraction point alive. If you fail to your rendez-vous with the chopper, the game will be over and you will be automatically tagged as M.I.A. by the government! Apart from shooting anything that stands in your way, you've got to plan your moves and think of what to do before engaging in the mission! The game offers some nice gameplay elements which are painfully realistic and particularly violent. You can cut an enemy's throat in cold blood or shoot soldiers directly in the face! You can also infiltrate war-torn buildings investigating for targets (i.e. when looking for hidden missiles to destroy) but you must always be alerted for explosive boobie-traps in every room. The ammunition is limited but you can find a few magazines scattered around each level, as well as some healing potions and grenades. Use them wisely! The only cons is the tricky way to fire your rifle in different angles and switch between your weapons, which always seems to take a split-second longer than an enemy needs to pull out his gun and blast you! Overall, the game's pace is intense and this game is a damn good action game title!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The ST version has identical visuals to the Amiga (in terms of color-palette and the main details), though the scrolling is a bit chunky at times and the sprites move a bit slower. The graphics are nice but not something to remember after finishing the game. Fire Force is nicely made without any eye-catching backdrops, large color palettes or parallax-scrolling. To the game's sound, the ST version offers a few cool gunshots, bangs and booms, but unfortunately not sampled.