Fire Fight

Fire Fight Review

Fire Fight is an overhead, three-quarter perspective shooter game. The object of the game is to complete a series of missions which you are guided through by a couple of your comrades who send you instructions via live transmissions. As you traverse the range of planetary landscapes in which each level is set, your ship is beleaguered by an array of enemy ships and guard towers who pop-up around every corner. Your ship is equipped with a radar which detects enemy ships from whichever vector they may be attacking from. During the game, you must gather items -and sometimes fellow soldiers - in order to survive each adventure. Six different weapons can be found, varying in strength from self-guided "swarming missiles" to the highly effective "canon". You can also pick up special powers, including mines, double-shield power, and a cloaking device for invisibility. After playing the game for a while, you start to find out which particular goodies are best to employ during particular battles of your sortie.

Fire Fight's network play capability is also worth mentioning. The game itself comes with two discs so that two players can compete in one of several levels, each vying to amass the most weaponry to destroy the other player. Players can use mines to set up traps for each other, and the cloaking device or the double-shield can both be used for evasive tactics. The only problem that I found with playing this game network style is that, when you die, your opponent inherits your store of weapons, becoming infinitely more powerful and hard to beat, as the respawned player starts off with just your basic pea-shooter weapon. This point aside though, I found that playing Fire Fight over a local network was the most exciting way to play. Don't get me wrong, the regular missions are fun and challenging, but there's just something more satisfying about playing against a "smart" ship.

This game requires no installation, as it is Windows 95 native and uses Direct X drivers. But I found that one of the major drawbacks of the gameplay was that the graphics, while extremely lush and detailed, were jumpy and almost distracting in places. Sure, this game is no Galaga, but it was enjoyable to say the least.

Gamespot