Previous Next

It's hardly even amusing to see a game claiming to have a sharp contemporary edge and then subsequently discovering that it's about as politically informed as Noddy.

Fire reckons that it puts you into a world of drug busting, hostage rescuing, and boat people. In fact it turns out that the A-Team is more realistic.

At least you can laugh at the manual. How would you like to 'destroy terrorist aviation and chimic manufactories of a warlike country in the NearEast'? Me neither - Southend may be ugly but it doesn't deserve to have its airpork nuked.

Gamewise, Fire's nothing special. It's a left and right horizontal scroller, with a passing resemblance to Star Ray - you fly a helicopter and you have to kill almost everything on screen. Fly five different missions, each set in an equally 'political' dodgy area, and it's split into two parts. The first part has you wiping out the heart of the problem. For example, in the Drugs!!! mission you have to destroy all the plantations but leave the villages and hot air balloons intact. In the second stage, you have to fight a big nasty; in this case an armoured train carrying illegal drug supplies.

Graphically, the game is nice. It's fast and colourful and some of the sprites are arcade quality. There's five level parallax scrolling, as well as a bit of vertical scrolling, just to add a bit of height to the play area. The sound isn't too bad either, with a soundtrack that - a little predictably for a European product - uses a sample of the word 'Fire' repeated in various pitches and tones.

It's fun - I won't deny that - but it is a little repetitive.