There are games, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, that just seem to ‘fit’ certain hardware.
Despite being available on every system in the known universe, 'Tetris' will always be a Game Boy game. 'Crazy Taxi' is another; as it will forever belong to the Dreamcast, and if someone tells me they’re playing 'Cannon Fodder' on anything other than the Amiga I just won’t believe them.
I can now add to this list ‘Urban Strike’, which is one of the most ‘Mega Drive’ games you could ever imagine.
I’m sure there are people who will take issue with this. I doubt Game Gear or Game Boy owners would contest that there's is the best way to enjoy the game, but I could imagine a few who grew up with the SNES might have something to say.
But this would be to miss the point. I’m not talking about which is the ‘best’ version of the game, I’m talking about what feels like the game’s home.
Having never played it before this morning and only doing so on the Mega Drive because that was the version some geezer at a boot sale was selling for four quid a couple of years ago, the game has very 90’s action movie stylings, setting, and plot, and these are immediately a perfect fit for the image Sega curated for the Mega Drive back in the day.
I’ve definitely played a couple of games from the ‘Strike’ series before. I have the Master System version of 'Desert Strike' but I’ve not played it, so I think perhaps this was a game I emulated back when I did a lot of that kind of thing.
I also remember playing 'Soviet Strike' on the Playstation but not to any great extent. It may have even just been a demo.
So my experience is limited, but that just made the time I’ve had so far with 'Urban Strike' all the better.
Other commitments have meant that I’ve only seen the first couple of levels at the time of writing, but you can bet I’ll be going back for more as soon as possible - not least because I’ve yet to encounter anything more ‘urban’ than a beachfront radar installation.
In a game of many successes I think the major ones are two-fold, and I can imagine that they are true of ‘Desert’ and ‘Jungle’ Strike too.
Firstly, the control of the helicopter is an absolute joy; you zip around the landscape dodging buildings and pirouetting to take out bad guys with just enough inertia to give you that full on, god-like, Nick Cage in ‘Wings of the Apache’, “I AM THE GREATEST” feeling.
And, secondly there’s the mission structure; which gives you a big open map, a bunch of objectives, and very little else. It put me in mind of the hundreds of hours I spent playing Just Cause 2, albeit on a much smaller scale. Much like that game (and indeed series) it’s almost impossible to make your way to an intended objective without getting distracted by something else on the way - and to me this is the essence of what makes ‘open world’ games so much fun.
This is all helped by the absolutely top notch presentation. The isometric view is full of detail and the animation of the helicopter and other vehicles in the game is fantastic. This is all almost over shadowed, however, by the amount of character the developer has managed to extract from soldiers, captives, and other human NPCs who are comprised of about 8 pixels.
The sound design is good too. The helicopters themselves sound a little weak for my taste but the gunfire and missiles are meaty and do a great job of letting you know what kind of weapon you’re being fired at by. The music is a big part of the 90’s action movie vibe I mentioned at the start, and is impossible to listen to without a huge grin.
In short Urban Strike has completely won me over. The 90’s style, fantastic isometric graphics, characterful animations, and early open world levels make it an absolute joy. I’ll definitely keep an eye out for others in series to add to my collection, but I don’t think there’s any chance they’ll spend long in my backlog.
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