Previous Next

The Marines were among the first American troops into the Gulf, a scenario uncannily like Op Harrier's tale of conflict between Middle East countries. The game is set in a fairly large warzone, with several islands and plenty of coastline. The Marines have arrived on an aircraft carrier armed with Harriers.

You begin your career as a Pilot Officer, but aim to rise through the ranks. To do this you must complete seven or eight progressively difficult missions, such as defending an airfield from enemy aircraft, sinking a ship or penetrating deep into enemy territory to destroy a nuclear base. Should you complete all the missions you're free to attack enemy targets as you wish.

Before each mission you are briefed by a cigar-chomping colonel. Then it's time to select up to six weapons from rocket pods, air-to-air missiles, 500lb and 1000lb bombs. There's also a built-in cannon. Once you return from a mission you can re-arm, re-fuel and have repairs done. On long missions you might choose to land at one of two friendly land bases. There are also two tanker planes for mid-air re-fuelling.

The game uses Rotox's Rotoscape technique, with the Harrier fixed at the centre of the screen. Left/right rotates the landscape around, while pushing forward increases speed and backward decreases it. Fire shoots cannon shells, but holding it down with up/down allows you to change your altitude. The function keys allow you to select one of the weapons you're carrying.

Once airborne, it's a good idea to call up the map screen; this shows everything for miles around in real-time - the game doesn't pause. So you can navigate to the target while avoiding enemy fighters, helicopters and anti-aircraft missiles sites. Once near the target, you can go to the main view, a useful radar scanner showing targets beyond visual range. Each hit on the Harrier causes a fire - four hits destroy it, as does colliding with the ground or another plane.

Sorry Stu I can't say I was at all thrilled by Operation Harrier. It's a weak shoot-'em-up with little in the way of depth or variety of enemies.

The Rotoscape effect to my mind worked brilliantly as an integral part of Rotox but here it adds little to the gameplay and I expected much more in the way of graphic detail, at least a more convincing shrink/expand effect.

Everything looks just too simple and cleanly laid out for my liking. Operation Harrier is very similar to Namco's Metal Hawk coin-op in play but lacks the speed or challenge to match it.

If Wings Of Fury drew inspiration from Harrier Attack, Operation Harrier looks to Raid On Bungeling Bay for ideas. In both cases, 16-bit hardware allows substantial improvement, the Rotoscaping technique is particularly impressive with lots of graphics moving very quickly: islands, jets, missiles and bullets all whizz round you at great speed.

The ability to go down into the landscape, with everything zooming upwards, is very neat too.

The presentation screens are absolutely superb, creating an atmosphere which I much prefer to Rotox. Unfortunately, there's not that many missions. When you complete them you can fly your own against remaining targets, but it's irritating repeating the same old early missions over and over. Fifty varied and random missions plus a save/load feature would've made a great game.

Presentation 88%
Attractive animated take-off/landing screens, different for carrier and land bases, plus sea/ground crash pics and briefing mumble by the colonel. Bypass them by pressing Fire.

Graphics 73%
Overhead perspective limits view of action, but radar compensates and everything moves very nicely. There's lots of detail on all the targets and it's generally better than Rotox.

Sound 75%
A nice military tune provides an intro, while in-game FX include plenty of bands and a good engine drone.

Hookability 78%
Good presentation gets you hooked, while the first mission is pretty easy. Bomb-dropping is a little fiddly, but everything else works well.

Lastability 62%
Seven or eight varied missions don't provide a massive challenge. Freedom to bomb everything thereafter can't compensate for repetitiveness of going through the same missions over and over in the same order.

Overall 70%
A fun and playable game, marred by lack of depth.