Line of Fire

The Good
I think that Line of Fire is Sega's answer to Taito's Operation Thunderbolt, because if you compare both these games, then you would know that the gameplay is basically the same, with its exact gameplay and the type of scrolling used. No story about an hijacked aircraft though. You are a commando, who must carry out an assignment that was supposed to be accomplished by two other soldiers, known as Blue and Red. This assignment involves stealing a secret machine gun unit from the enemy's lair, and get out alive.

There are eight stages in the game, and these stages take you through a jungle, river, canyon, desert, ruins, and the enemy camp. To succeed through these stages, you have to kill enemy soldiers, choppers, and jeeps. If you get hit by any one of these enemies, you will lose some life, but you can restore life by shooting the little med-kits along the way. To kill enemies, you only have your machine gun, but you also have bombs that will pack quite a punch, and more bombs can be picked up during the mission. You have unlimited ammo, which is an advantage because you do not have to rely just on bombs to do all your dirty work.

I enjoyed playing LOF. I like games more if you are forced to use some other peripheral (eg: gun) other than the joystick, and you use that peripheral to shoot at enemies once they have appeared on screen, and the same strategy can also be used against the bosses that appear at the end of the stage. You can use the joystick to play the game, but I rather not use it if there is a second option available; it only wastes a lot of time as you slowly point the cursor to a certain enemy and then fire your gun.

The Bad
Unfortunately, besides the gameplay, the rest of the elements are such a disappointment. First, the graphics don't amaze me at all. Apart from stage one, all the graphics lack detail, and consist of basic colors, instead of mostly gradients. Gradients are only used for a portion of the background which indicate skylines, but there is little of them.

The sounds are not that special either. Only one tune can only be heard on the title screen. There is no music during the game, nor when the game is over. As I said earlier, you use a machine gun to fire at enemies. Yet, when you fire, it does not sound like a gun at all, but more of a clock ticking.

Worse of all, there is no satisfying ending. I worked so hard at completing the mission, and all I get in return is a trip back to the title screen without any congratulations.

The Bottom Line
There are better shooters out there besides LOF. The game lacks the graphics and sound that it really deserves. The only thing that is good about the game is the fact that you can use more than a joystick to play the game. Perhaps the coin-op version of LOF is much better.

Rating: *½