REAL GAMES - A.S.P. AIR STRIKE PATROL

Did you ever get that talk from your parents about how they were not mad, but disappointed? That's pretty much how I feel about this game.

The box art for the game depicts a couple of planes commencing in a dog fight. The box also tells us that this game is an aerial shooter in which we make tactical strikes on land forces while engaging in dangerous battles with enemy planes. Sounds pretty sweet, right? Well...not so much.

Technically, the game did include blowing stuff up on the land and the occasional dog fight, so I guess I can't be mad about that.  But this game calls itself an aerial shooter, and while I suppose you could call it that, it is not the aerial shooter that most people are familiar with.  When I hear aerial shooter, I instantly think of the vertical scrolling shooters where you dodge enemy fire and acquire power ups to your weapons.  This game, however, is nothing like that

Starting the game, we are given the mission details.  Our first goal is to go in and blow up some radars.  Got it.  Then the game takes us to HQ, and the first problem arises.  Nothing in the HQ menu is labeled or recognizable.  After about 10 minutes of trial and error, I figure out how to start the damn mission and how to change the plane.  This is a necessity, because the default plane is a piece of crap.

As always, I tried to figure out the controls first.  The first thing you'll notice is how stiff the flight controls are.  I guess that's there for realism, but it just adds a level of difficulty that isn't needed.  The starter plane has a boost, flare, a worthless machine gun, and a missile that uses the same targeting system I use when I'm drunk and need to use the bathroom.  The other plane loses the boost button, missile becomes bomb, and your gun becomes useful.

At least I found the bathroom.  That's more than the missile can do.

The music for this game is the same song repeated over and over.  What's even worse is that the song sounds like Danger Zone.  Played on a kazoo.  Somewhere, Kenny Loggins is rolling over in his grave.

Unlike my career, I'm still alive.

Graphically speaking, this game has a lot of problems.  The goals of each mission are very specific on what you can and can not blow up.  Unfortunately, everything looks the same.  I ended up having to redo the same missions multiple times because I couldn't tell the difference between the beige square and the other beige square with a single green pixel difference.

Finally, we have the gameplay.  The missions range from easy to ridiculous, and often times the objective is not clear.  Having limited fuel and ammo is a bit tedious as you will have to redo the same mission multiple times before your objective is complete.  However, it was an interesting take on an aerial shooter, and an interesting experience.

It's hard to give this game a fair rating, since I was expecting something completely different.  If I judge it by its own merit, Air Strike Patrol is an original game plagued with a lot of problems.  This game could have easily been made in the more traditional vertical scrolling shooter format, and it would have better in my opinion.  Therefore, I give Air Strike Patrol 2 annoying generals out of 5.

Following this, there was some rant telling me to join the Air Force.