A.S.P. Air Strike Patrol

Nothing spells good quality fun like ASP, which stands for Air Strike Patrol or Awesome Shoot-em-up Propaganda

Release:  January 1995

Genre:  Shoot-em-up, Action-Simulation

What the Internet says it's worth:  $9.99

The most you should pay for it:  $7.00

Should you play it?:  Maybe, but only if you're still butt-hurt over too few civilian casualties in operation Desert Storm

Best part:  Blowing shit you're not supposed to up

Worst part:  Having to play the same the same level over again because you blew shit up you weren't supposed to

Interesting fact:   Also  known as "Desert Fighter" in Europe and "Desert Fighter: Suna no Arashi Sakusen" in Japan

Overall:  C-

I LOVE Ultimate Action-Simulations!

I was pretty young when The Gulf War occurred, like four years old, so I don't really remember anything about it beyond that Saddam Hussein was a very bad man.  This game really cleared up some things for me, of course they had to change the names to protect the innocent, but I'm pretty good at reading between the lines, so I hope you can keep up.  You see, in 1990 the middle eastern nation of Zarak, invaded the neighboring Middle-Eastern nation of Sweit.   So Coalition forces showed up and kicked some ass.  They got this one bad ass dude (me) in an A-10 Thunderbolt and and he blew the hell out of everything.  But then, just when it seemed like the Zarakis were retreating and about to be defeated, shit got weird.  Bad ass dude's last mission was to blow up the Zaraki HQ, but when he bombed the building, ALIEN technology appeared from the rubble, and it was dude's final mission to blow up the alien WMDs and end the war!  Yay America!

As far as shooters go, this one is pretty weak.  Most shooters are either bottom-to-top or left-to-right oriented.  This game is an "isometric shoot em' up", which in this case means more of sandbox style of game play.  At the beginning of every mission you start in the lower left hand corner of the map, and fly freely in any path you choose to get to various targets for bombing.  This seems pretty straightforward, except the targets aren't always obvious.  For instance, the game will tell you to blow up a bunch of chemical weapons plants, and even after blowing every possible part of said weapons plants to ashes, you will still not be able to the complete mission.  Apparently, tanks and jeeps are a crucial part of the chemical manufacturing process, and must be destroyed too.  This gets frustrating because there is a time limit on how long it takes to blow up 80% (or more on some levels) of your targets, especially because you have to switch between multiple maps after each "sortie" for almost every mission.

most of my sorties ended this way

Aside from bombing things, you can enter into air combat with other airplanes, but I don't know why you would do this.  If you choose either of the F-15s, you can shoot down the airplanes, but can't blow up any targets.  If you choose the A10 Thunderbolt, you can blow up ground targets, but not any airplanes.  What this amounts to is just ignoring the other airplanes and using the A10, as you can't progress in the game without it.

Just like a real Gulf War pilot you have the option of blowing up peacefully worshiping people in a mosque. 

And just like during the Gulf War, the liberal, America hating media will try and paint it in an unfavorable light.  Go back to Russia you Commie Pigs!!

I don't really know what else there is to say about this game other than every mission is pretty much the same thing, start in the bottom left hand corner and blow stuff up until you die or run out of fuel.  

Probably best to skip this one too.