Give this one the chop.
* Looks alright
Minus:
* Stealth in a helicopter
* Controls are weird
* No actual freedom
You may have noticed the lack of Plus and Minus points. This is basically because I didn't endure "Fire Blade" for any longer than really necessary to realise that one or two decisions taken by the developers have made the game pretty hopeless.
Actually it's just one decision: Stealth in a helicopter.
It boggles the mind how one could think this is at all a practical or believable idea, it's even more astonishing that several people must have agreed it was a good suggestion and implemented it into the game.
Stealth helicopter. Really.
It's not just the idea that is wrong, the implementation goes against the idea of the system also; we'll take mission 4 as the prime example:
Your task is to ferry an incursion squad to a landing zone at the end of a short valley. Using stealth mode is mandatory, and along your path you will fly over enemy watchtowers, convoys and infantry. They all hear you coming despite your stealth mode because STEALTH IS IMPOSSIBLE IN A HELICOPTER.
You cannot approach the landing zone from another direction because the tasks take place at the end of invisible tunnels which you are forbidden to fly outside of, and you cannot fly higher to make the sound of your noisy blades any quieter to those on the ground.
Aside from this stupid, stupid idea the first few missions are passable entertainment. The controls are strange; what you'd hope to be left and right on the analogue stick is strafing, and what you'd hope to be strafing is left and right. Also they've tried to implement a joystick style control for your altitude on the analogue stick with down being pitch up and up being pitch down. And even if you invert the controls it always feels wrong because all you're effectively doing is increasing/decreasing the throttle.
You're stuck with the left/right controls though, they can't be switched.
The item pick-up's don't always work, you simply need to fly over them apparently but sometimes you have to fly over them 3 times before the game recognises what you're trying to do.
I'm patient and i persevere with games. But not when i regard the reason for my constant failure is due to bad programming or bad ideas.
I only got to Mission 4, after barely an hour play time. I gave "Seek and Destroy" more time despite the early evidence of poor design and wished i hadn't, I'm not going to spend another evening playing a game which will most likely waste it.
"Fire Blade" sucks.