Since I started writing game reviews for a living I haven't run across very many genuinely mediocre games. I'm not saying they're not out there, just that I haven't been getting many of them. Usually the games I end up reviewing fall into one of three categories:
1. really friggin' awesome
2. pretty damn cool
3. Velveeta
I've played my fair share of incredible games, seen wave after wave of games that go notably above and beyond the call of duty, and yes, I've slogged through heaps of "imitation game things" that, if administered orally, would produce severe gastro-intestinal distress. But mediocre games, games that don't really impress or offend û they're just THERE? Nope, not too many of those.
However, I just finished my tenure playing the PC CD-ROM version of Jungle Strike. Finally, a game that's not good enough to be good but not bad enough to be bad. It's average, run of the mill, won't turn any heads. This PC version of Jungle Strike, brought to us by Gremlin Interactive, is a product full of modestly good things and modestly bad things, all wrapped up in a disposable shovelware ribbon. As a cheap-o arcade game you'll play for a little while and forget about, it's half-way decent. Will it go down as one of the best (or worst) action game conversions for the PC? Not by a long shot.
Jungle Strike, the sequel to Desert Strike, was originally a game for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, as well as their portable counterparts, the Sega Game Gear and Nintendo Digital Watch Boy. (GAME Boy. Sorry, my bias is showing.) Like its predecessor, Jungle Strike was considered a good, challenging arcade game, the kind of game you weren't going to master in an afternoon. That's certainly still true, but about two years have passed since Jungle Strike was a new thing, and it shows. Scott Miler's Kroz games are still good games, but they're a little dated now.
In Jungle Strike you pilot a helicopter (or occasionally a jet, boat, or motorcycle) as you attempt to blow the hell out of a bunch of terrorists before they succeed in doing nasty and un-American deeds. The action is shown from an isometric 3D perspective, with you flying over eight-way scrolling terrain in your quest for fanatics to send back to Allah. You'll follow these creeps from Washington DC, where you will thwart various attempts to cause grievous harm to our capitol and its inhabitants, to the jungle domain of a South American drug czar.
If you've ever played Jungle Strike for the Genesis or SNES, you know just what to expect. That's both good and bad. Jungle Strike is basically a good game. The problem is, it's a two-year-old game for 16-bit systems. If this indicates to you that Jungle Strike will have trouble making a name for itself on systems that run the likes of Wing Commander III, give yourself a kewpie doll. The PC game slag heap is loaded down with good games whose time has come and gone. Does anybody out there still play Impossible Mission II by Epyx? I thought not.
Before I totally abandon the issue of gameplay (to recap: decent game past its prime), I should mention the joystick control, because it annoys me and is a pretty good example of what a lackluster conversion this is. You have the option of playing with the joystick, but there's a catch or two. Apart from the standard four key movement controls, there are four buttons used in the game. One acts as a "slide" control, allowing you to dodge left and right, and the other three fire your three different weapons. If you're like me, you think of the Gravis GamePad as a natural shoo-in for controller of choice for this type of game; not only is it the closest PC equivalent to a Genesis or SNES pad, but it has four buttons û just right. I guess nobody at Gremlin thought that way. The PC version of Jungle Strike only supports one joystick button. That's right û ONE. If you want to play with the stick, you still have to use the keyboard to slide, and you have to whap the space bar to cycle through your weapons. This may work all right if you're using a standard joystick like the CH Flightstick (certainly not the type of controller that feels natural to ME for arcade games), but just try it with a GamePad. Gremlin, would it have actually put you over your budget to program the game for four button controllers?
Now let's forget about gameplay altogether and talk about what you'll see in the PC version of Jungle Strike that cartridge gamers never had available to them. In order to get consumers to pay full price for this aging game, the decision was made to release it on CD-ROM. (Yes, sadly there are still consumers out there who think to themselves, "It's on CD, and if it's on CD it must be big, and if it's big it must be good!" These are the people who defy the law of natural selection.) The actual GAME of Jungle Strike is only about three megabytes, so some major space had to be filled. Hey, how'za bout some stupid and pointless digitized video?! Yeah, cool!! Yes, Jungle Strike's already paper-thin "story" (There's bad guys wearing sheets on their heads. Make 'em die!) is now augmented with some of the must unwarranted video I've ever seen. If Gremlin had gained access to some military stock footage, that would have at least been an interesting and tone-setting addition. Instead, we get to meet the game's cast of two-dimensional characters, all of whom behave like it's their first time in front of a camera (and it probably is). There's an Arab madman who looks like Peter Coyote with an oblivious grin, a blown-dry hero who refuses to admit that he's not Clint Eastwood, and a bunch of inept "supporting characters" who've been waiting patiently for call-backs since "Plan 9 From Outer Space" started filming. The video segments actually look pretty good (when you don't penalize them for the clueless fools in front of the camera), but they don't play that way. On a Pentium 60 with eight megs of RAM and a good double-spin CD drive, the audio and video frequently pause for a second or two while the CD drive plays catch up; on a similar machine armed with an NEC triple spin (a serious handicap, as anyone who owns one can certainly attest to) there were so many missing slices of the movies that it was almost impossible to follow the sub-sitcom dialogue. Pretty pathetic.
Jungle Strike is a venerable but aging arcade game swaddled in more modern digital garbage. As a multi-media experience it ranks right up there with cleaning out your sock drawer while listening to a Yanni 8-track. As an arcade game, it's good but certainly won't stand out in a crowd. If you're into arcade games this one is worth a look at, but you can certainly find a lot more value for your money. The time to buy Jungle Strike is when it hits the bargain bin. It's fifteen or twenty bucks well spent. I wouldn't go beyond that.
