1. F-15 City War
Instructions
Strap in to your flamboyantly red jet and soar high and above in this
sluggish and slow action-flight simulator that handles about as authentically
as throwing a paper airplane while offering as much challenge as George
W. Bush's exam to get into the National Guard.
The first level offers a nice pseudo 3-D effect, but it gets wasted and feels cheap with the "floaty" controls. And I keep thinking this must be the longest street in the world. It's like flying the whole way following above I-95 to Florida without being granted a pee break. Shooting is a touch on the static side, too. There is a little bit action to be found here, with the phallic-looking tanks and incoming planes, but it's not enough to balance the overpowering boring tedious parts.
The second stage switches to an overhead shooting and the control problems come along for the new ride. It's just plain sluggish to handle and games like 1942 blow it quite literally out of the water. The terribly slow controls are sure to count for a lot of the hits from enemy planes. At the end of the level your jet flies off screen to fight the game's first boss battle: a battleship. There isn't muc strategy involved in boss battles; moving around in circles and using regular fire will blast away at the guns until only the cannon remains to be destroyed.
The next stage takes you to another locale; a place where everything seems to be blue and many hazardous bars are placed strategically for your plane to crash into. The game also begins to really cheat here. Intervals of tanks on the ground and what looks like TIE-Fighters straight out Star Wars in the sky move at speeds that will leave you asking yourself: Why like can't our piece of shit thing-on-wings move like that? Ducking and dodging these bats from Hell involves more luck than gaming skill. In about the middle of the level you will meet up with a purple horned transformer that fires circular charge blasts. After some return shots, you will push it back and continue forward. Two more will return later on in the stage. And another thing, this game has a major difficulty with deciding on when to end levels. Five minutes playing this game feels like a half an hour.
Giant tank stage! This one is basically the battleship, but with different sprites and on land. Follow this strategy: shoot in a circular counter-clockwise motion. As with the battleship, after so many hits all guns will be destroyed leaving you to deal solely with the cannon fire.
F-15 repeats itself with another overhead water stage. This time around there are annoying homing missles floating in the water. Release me from my pain, missles of death. Release me to a place of eternal sunsets and red and white striped jets. Tip: The red jets leave 1-ups.
Emulation problem or programming problem? You decide. All I know is don't stare too long at the moving background; it'll mesmerize you or cause hysterical blindness.
There is no boss to the water level, you are just swept to the next area. Here you have to fly around stone pillars and avoid the regular tanks and jets. Yeah, this stage; it's about as exciting as dodging stone pillars, I tell you. I had to pause for a smoke halfway. As Freud said, sexuality is key. Think of them as the phallic symbols of your fore fathers. Guide yours around them in a fit of sexual fit and physical frustration. Who would have thought a game like F-15 could be so psychologically liberating? I HATE MY FATHER. I REALLY HATE HIM. I'm cured! Maxivision 15 has cured me! Thank you Jesus!
Finally you get to repeat the game strategy again for taking out this exaggerated in size boss plane. It was all worth it; the pain, the tears, the grief. It was all for this moment. Soak it in. Smells a lot like jet fuel. Finished? Push reset.
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