Published by: Virgin Interactive Entertainment
Reviewed by: Pascal "Saturnman" Vellet
System: Sony Playstation (also avilable on Sega Saturn)
Genre: Chopper Flight Simulator
Rating: 5 out of 10
Summary:
Black Dawn is the first decent chopper game to appear on 32-bit systems, but the high difficulty and complicated control do significantly compromise enjoyment.
The Review:
Why, why, why are all those chopper sims so bad on those 32-bit systems? First, there was the dreadful Black Fire (Saturn), then the so-so and over-hyped Thunder Strike 2 (Saturn and Playstation). The little known Black Dawn on Playstation didn't appear to break the tradition. But guess what? It's not all that bad. Well - it's not that good either, but it's definately a step above Black Fire and Thunder Strike 2.
The action takes place in the near future, 1998 to be more precise, and the world has changed a great deal. Chaos reigns supreme, global prblems overwhelm humanity, and various terrorists groups thrive in this nasty setting. You're part of a top secret, Black Operations military group funded by the US Government (or what's left of it), and your mission is to save innocent civilians and take out terrorist militians at any cost (indeed, the "cost" seems to be total carnage!)
First thing I noticed was the graphics - they mostly look good and everything is nicely shaded. Every vehicle from your helicopter to the enemy's arsenal are relatively good-looking. However, every landscape is kinda flat and barren. For example, in one level, you're fighting Middle-Eastern terrorists in the middle of New York; you'd normally expect flying between skyscrapers, but no - you're in Central Park. And it's [not the Central Park I remember, because instead of a forest, you only have a couple of trees here and there. Other levels disappoint as well, with no big mountains or canyons to fly in and around.
The game itself is pretty hard. The enemies are, I assume, well-trained, because they rarely miss you! And the way the missions are laid out is what you would expect. As the instruction manual puts it, every mission is revealed to you on a "need-to-know basis", What this means is as soon as you're completed your current mission, you're immediately informed of your next one, while you sometimes can find some precious items like extra fuel or ammo. This is like a war of attention for you, the enemy is relentless.
One significant difficulty of Black Dawn is the control itself. Trying to fly your chopper is tricky and requires the use of not only all the buttons of the PSX joypad, but several buttons combinations as well. From my experience with Black Fire and Thinder Strike 2, I'm sure the control could have been simplified. For the better.
I don't think I can really recommend Black Dawn to anyone. It's certainly better in comparison than previous 32-bit chopper sims, but that doesn't say much when those earlier games were so bad! In fact, Soviet Strike is actually the best of the bunch.
© 1997-2000 i_hammer@netvision.net.il
Get your own Free Home Page