Fireblade

Heads up, soldier?the utterly uninspired helicopter shooter Fireblade is ready for action. Your mission: Try to stay awake.

Fireblade lets gamers command a state-of-the-art military helicopter?even though the game itself doesn?t do much to command your attention. In case you were wondering, Fireblade is the name of an antiterrorist military force on assignment to wipe out the bad guys, and in classic get-them-before-they-get-us fashion, you have to take out terrorist cells, training camps, and weapons factories with your super-duper helicopters. The 18 missions call for both stealth and all-out attack-and-defend tactics, so you?ll have plenty of stuff to blow up with your rail gun, swarmer missiles, and other explosive goodies.

It sure does sound like it could be fun, but it?s not. The graphics are merely passable with the notable exception of a fairly cool thermal imaging mode, which comes into play in some missions. That?s not helped by the weak, hackneyed voice-acting and uninspired music that sounds like it was cut from a made-for-TV 1970s war movie. The awkward flight controls cannot be reconfigured much (just tweaked slightly), and the all-too-linear mission structure makes progress frustrating instead of fun.

Ultimately, there?s nothing to make Fireblade stand out?it?s like every other mission-based helicopter shooter, except that it lacks a personality. Fireblade? Firebland.

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