Thunderstrike: Operation Phoenix early hands on playtest!

Thanks to PSX Nation for the info.  Can\'t wait to play this one.  

"Thunderstrike:Operation Phoenix landed in our greedy little hands late last night. We went straight to playing this one mission demo and found some pretty nice things happening. Thunderstrike is a series being resurrected by Core for the PlayStation 2.
The title is mission based action from the control of an Attack Helicopter. We found ourselves in the middle of a battlefield with three objectives. For this demo at least, there was also a time limit set for our objectives to be completed. The objectives all were based around destroying targets. The final game we are told will have a variety of missions.

The default view is from inside the chopper but the demo offers an outside view as well. I found the outside view to work better with the control, though the inside view has nice touches like a dangling stuffed animal to keep you from being homsesick.

Speaking of which, the demo controls make nice use of the dual sticks. The left stick controls the speed of the chopper while the right stick controls the heighth as well as turning. Weapons are chosen and fired from the top buttons, all of which are easily accessible.

The weapons range from the simple machine gun, which is subject to frequent overheating but unlimited use, to the more sophisticated missiles including the AGM-63 which has its own camera view and is controlled by you until it runs out of fuel. Upon crashing it even has a nice "Television Dead Air" type screen.

The action really sets the tone here with plenty of enemy fire on both the ground and the air. Jets fly by above while tanks on the ground strike with anti-air missiles. All of this while your critical missions remain. We quickly learned not to waste too much time on the enemies as ammunition is finite.

Graphically the game looks clean, though there\'s nothing too impressive here. This is just a demo but the visuals lack the flair we\'ve seen in upcoming titles such as Ace Combat 4. It\'s not to say that things look unattractive, they don\'t, there\'s just not the wow factor of some of its competing titles in the genre. We all have to remember that demo\'s can be deceiving. Red Faction\'s demo, afterall, painted a poor picture for the final product.

Core is aiming to break out of the Lara Croft world and Thunderstrike might just be the answer. In the least, Thunderstrike Operation Phoenix is a much welcomed addition to the PS2 platform. Afterall, Warhawk never appeared which leaves plenty of helicopter hungry gamers waiting for something to fill their void."

[Evi]

I think all helicopter games never turn out bad. They\'re always cool...

[Bobs_Hardware]

helicopters look purty...ground looks ****...and i said ****, **** **** **** **** **** **** **** ****....really ****...crap...**** ****ty **** **** ****