A.S.P Air Strike Patrol

A.S.P Air Strike Patrol

1995

SETA/System 3

Genre: Isometric Shoot 'em up

Ahh Air Strike Patrol, I've never played you before but who knew you'd be the first Every SNES Game that I've reviewed that I actually truly enjoyed playing. I started this game up and was almost immediately confused, the one thing about this game that I must complain about is it's confusing menu system. For things like choosing what map to fly on, what aircraft to use, and getting target intel you have to use the menu system which is designed to look like using a battlefield console, but not very intuitive.

As the general point of the game is to pilot an aircraft in a fictional war (obviously based on Operation Desert Storm) the aircraft are accurate to the era; the A-10 and F-15E for ground attack, and the F-15E for aerial combat. When playing this game, one will obviously draw comparisons to the more popular Desert Strike which has a very similar gameplay mechanic except with helicopters instead of jets. Here is one of the five main maps in Air Strike Patrol:

The maps are relatively small and easy to navigate and you can find your location on the map during a mission simply by pausing the game. One of the frustrating parts of this game, that isn't shown on that map, is friendly units. The friendly units tend to get mixed in with enemies and cost large amounts of points if they are destroyed. On the first mission, I managed to completely decimate the enemy very quickly, but I accidentally destroyed one friendly tank and still ended up with negative points overall.

As you can see, around enemy installations, things can get very hectic very quickly with multiple enemy air and ground units firing on you, but the good news is that your aircraft tend to be very resilient and can take quite a beating without being shot down, not unlike the real A-10.

Like I previously mentioned this was the first game I've reviewed for this blog that really pulled me in and was highly enjoyable to play. The audio in this game was slightly better than average, the music was pleasant in the background, but not particularly memorable. The sound effects were outstanding however, with the sounds of explosions all around really pulling you into the game. The only things I would have to take points off for are the hard to maneuver menu system, and unoriginality (let's face it, this game basically is Desert Strike, except it came out 3 years later)

8/10