Full Review: Who’d have thought that flying a helicopter and blasting the crap outta things could be so boring?
Back in the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis eras, there was a series of games known as “Strike.” Desert Strike, Jungle Strike, Urban Strike, Lucky Strike, Strike 3 You’re Out…err scratch those last 2. The Strike games continued with little success in the PlayStation era, pushing out turds like Soviet Strike. All of the Strike games had one thing in common – riding around in a jacked up helicopter and blowing the crap out of the bad guys and turning some buildings into a pile of debris, and saving the world in the process. The series was extremely popular back in the day, despite being milked like a cow the whole time (trademark Electronic Arts).
Why am I mumbling about the past? Because Fire Blade, Midway’s homage to Strike, is the topic here. Developed by Kuju Entertainment (yeah, I’ve never heard of them either), Fire Blade attempts to create a game that does tribute to the Strike series, but unfortunately contains hardly any of the elements that made those old games fun. The emphasis on frustrating stealth and uneven missions not only makes the game not very fun, it makes the game flat-out boring. You’d do better finding a used SNES and grabbing the original Strike games…because Fire Blade isn’t going to fit the bill.
Fire Blade features 4 campaigns that make up the whole game, along with a short “training” campaign. Besides that, there’s nothing else to the game. The campaigns take you to different parts of the world, from the Swiss Alps to a jungle. Your mission of course is to blast away those wacky terrorists and protect the world from them. If you aren’t yawning in boredom yet, wait until you reach the training mission…and hear a completely moronic superstar pilot giving you orders to collect some sort of crates that are so poorly placed that actually progressing in the training is impossible. It gets so bad, actually that you’ll probably be tempted to turn around your guns and try to blow up your own compound. Shame that you can’t actually do it (though the funny part is the base gets blown up anyway when you finish – and yes I was smiling at the irony.
Where Fire Blade falls on its ass is the execution. On paper, or in the mind of a competent game developer, the game sounds like an excellent idea that would woo some old-school gamers who played those Strike games back in the day. But Fire Blade suffers from a severe identity crisis that that vision just can’t be realized. Those old Strike games were honest arcade shooters, with hordes of bad guys to shoot at and things to blow up. They were action games in the purest sense. Fire Blade, on the other hand, follows the line of tedium and boredom. A majority of the missions involve stealth – and that’s not much fun. I hate to cross genres here, but Metal Gear Solid 2’s stealth works because of the circumstances and obstacles – creating a tense atmosphere. But Fire Blade’s stealth doesn’t come off like that. Here we are with this helicopter armed to the teeth and we’re pressing square to cloak ourselves and firing EMP weapons to disable weapons? It would make more sense if you were a single person on the ground fighting (MGS2), but here it doesn’t.
Even when you aren’t playing stealth, there’s not a lot going on. There’s hardly any time when there’s hordes of enemies to shoot at, which leads to a lot of flying around and doing nothing. A few other missions involve playing babysitter to some allies, which of course can get frustrating when the damn people you’re babysitting are borderline retarded. A handful of the missions involve attacking parts of areas (such as blowing up a dam), but it’s done so poorly and illogically that it’s not even worth it.
The campaigns themselves are fairly lengthy, but given the ho-hum feel of the game, you’d have to really be into helicopters and military things to get enjoyment out of this game (of which I am neither). I’m sure someone of this background would find plenty to like – but this gamer wants a little less tedium and a little more excitement, thank you.
If anything, Fire Blade’s controls are well placed and effective. Once you get down what’s what, you won’t have a problem going into sniper mode (which is pretty cool, actually), or going into stealth, or just evading things. It does take a little time to adjust, but it becomes second nature after that.
But controls really can’t save the game if it’s lacking any sort of thrill or excitement. Since Fire Blade has neither, it cancels out…but if someone does get enjoyment out of the game, then the controls will do you well.
Visually Fire Blade attempts to ape the Strike games as much as possible, and manages to succeed. The quasi-3D view is very similar to the 16-bit games – except it looks a little more next generation. It’s not one of the elite lookers, but not bad. The textures are a little on the bland side and the details on the ground are not really all that exciting but it never looks really ugly. Effects from the various weapons are nicely done, but nothing really spectacular.
The sound is, unfortunately, not good at all. The music is bland and really doesn’t fit as a “war game.” The background music for NFL Films would fit this game better. The voice acting too is bad…really bad. If I were in the Armed Forces and my commander talked like that, I probably would have pissed my pants laughing. Midway probably had a voice acting budget of 5 bucks and got some homeless people off the streets of Chicago and paid them each 50 cents to read the script. In the first freaking mission you hear all you really need to hear before realizing it just isn’t going to get any better.
