Thunder Strike 2

One of my favorite Sega CD games was AH3 Thunderstrike, and I can definitely say that Core has taken it to the next level.You have mountainous terrain to fly over with great-looking enemy vehicles and craft that move around in real 3-D.

The difficulty has been cranked up as well as the intensity.The music is more reserved now but is still of good quality, especially some of the more bass-laden tracks. I guess you could say this is the equivalent of Warhawk on the Saturn, but that's not quite true. ThunderStrike is longer and requires more strategy in attacking. It does suffer sometimes from pop-up, but considering the vast play area, it's not a bad trade-off. Run out and grab a copy!

Helicopters often get the shaft in the fast-paced video game world of flight sims. Most gamers would prefer to spend their hours behind the stick of a jet screaming through the sky at 500 mph rather than undertake deadly precision missions in a heavily armed chopper. Thunderstrike II aims to end all that.

This Saturn game is the sequel to AH-3 Thunderstrike, the popular Sega CD game developed by Core, and it plays like a dream. EArs 16-bit Desert Strike series showed that helicopters can be as, if not more exciting than flying a plane around due to the amazing variety of tasks a helicopter can do in the combat arena. U.S. Gold seems to have taken inspiration from the EA example by focusing on fun and inventive missions instead of being a techie's fever dream by focusing on all the dull mechanics of actually flying one of the things

There are at least 30 missions that you can undertake as a chopper pilot, and happily, they are varied enough to hold one's interest. You can cnoose different angles to view the action, from the extreme outside camera that lets you see your gyro and all of its surroundings, to a "pilot's-eye view" for maximum reality. In addition to all this, the game is actually action-packed and quite detailed. So if you can't wait for EA's proposed next generation helicopter sims that are supposed to debut late next year, check out Thunderstrike II.