Hey up, there's trouble afoot. A gaggle of drugs barons have got together and are threatening the democracy of the small Republic of Lafia, although no-one's quite sure why. Anyway, the helpless Lafian government have requested aid form America (who else?) and Congress have agreed to send a posse of Green Berets (and some men) to sort them out. As luck would have it, you're the American pilot of a rather smart helicopter which can cause all kinds of mayhem. Got it?

You've got to work your way through seven different (but similar) missions before you finally get to finish off the leader of this unseemly coup. These missions include picking up paras, destroying cocaine production buildings and blowing away planes, choppers and ships - a veritable cocktail of violence.

A bit choppy
Controlling the chopper is not easy and you will find yourself going round in circles at first. It's fast and easily manoeuvrable but takes time to get used to. A small circle in front of the chopper (the sight mode) directs you to the nearest para to rescue, but it's more useful for determining your general direction. The areas that you fly around are small and unlike Desert Strike (there, I've mentioned it), you're never traveling in the same direction for more than a couple of seconds.

The overhead view works reasonably well and you fly at the same height throughout the game. Scattered around the islands are various ground targets, many of which will launch bombs at you. It's best to bomb runways, tank, tank hangers and helicopter landing pads as soon as possible - this stops more enemies emerging.

Fortunately, the bombs don't travel as fast as your chopper and if you can control the beast you will be able to avoid most of them. There's a control panel to keep you informed of the fuel/weapons situation and the number of paras still to be rescued. This is the helpful, particularly since it's constantly on-screen.

Missions start on board the good ship Excalibur, from which you fly to destroy the targets and pick up paras. To p-pick a para, you hover above him, then you're transported into another short shoot-em-up section where you have to destroy oncoming enemy helicopters while hoisting the para up rope.

Let's do it all again
As you continue through the missions though, there is a feeling of deja vu. You blast runways and buildings, airlift paras, collect power-ups and then do it again. The heat-seeking missiles are fun to dodge but little else is noteworthy. The graphics are uninspiring - they resemble one of those children's playmaps where you can drive Matchbox cars along pretend roads.

Released hot on the heels of Desert Strike, references are inevitable. Firehawk is a shoot-em-up with far less fuss than its illustrious counterpart. Sadly, it's way behind on gameplay - there is no feel of realism whatsoever. You feel like you're actually flying a helicopter in Desert Strike, you don't in Firehawk.

If you feel particularly committed to Lafia's cause, then Firehawk is tailor-made for you. However, many Amiga games are more developed in graphics, sound and gameplay and you can't hide the fact that it's not as good as Desert Strike, even though it is £10 cheaper.

Freelance writers always amused me greatly when I was on the AP staff. They would poke their heads sheepishly around the office door when the Ed invited them to do a review and ask, "What is it then, another cruddy game that you lot don't want to review?" And then we'd all laugh like crazy-mad-dribbling-bonkers people because yes, it was another cruddy old game and we'd fobbed it off on another gullible freelancer. But they still came back for more and we still laughed and they became increasingly bitter and twisted and we laughed about that too.

Now I'm no longer on the AP staff and I've noticed serious attempts among the team to stifle laughter when I agree to do another review. This month they were helpless with mirth when I said I'd look at Firehawk for them. Uh, oh.

Something like this was bound to happen. Sooner or later we were bound to get Desert Strike clones and this doesn't mark an auspicious beginning for the new genre. Firehawk is an every-which-way scrolling shoot-'em-up which takes its central theme straight from Desert Strike and then smashes it to tiny little bits in a whirlwind of dodgy control and pointless gameplay.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. People seem to get unreasonably ruffled if you indulge in the popular AP pastime of ritually maiming a game's reputation without first examining the evidence. Let's start with the plot, shall we?

Johnny Foreigner (boo, hiss etc) has done something unspeakably wicked. Meanwhile Uncle Sam (oh say can you see, but the dawn's early light etc) decides that enough is enough and dispatches a team of top agents to put things right. But how do we get the agents home, Mr President? We'll send three helicopters on a boat and they'll pick up all the agents and everything will be fine. Hurrah. This is where you, intrepid game player that you are, come in - you fly the choppers.

The control system, much like everything else in the game, is loosely based on that of Desert Strike. You may fly forwards or backwards and you may spin to the left or right. Sadly, thouh, left and right spinning are so uncontrollably fast that you scarcely ever get your bird pointing the way you want it to.

But it's hard to tell which way it's facing anyway so you're never too disappointed. The result is a lot of aimless whizzing about and swearing. Firehawk hasn't quite made up its mind about what it wants to be. If it wants to be a bog-standard shoot-'em-up it should have bog-standard controls. If it wants to be Desert Strike, it should have had more realistic controls. As it is, it's just annoying.

Buildings shoot at you. This is pretty standard shoot-'em-up stuff so there's nothing to complain about there. And it's fairly easy to destroy the buildings (once you're pointing in the right direction) so no real loss of marks there either. Well that's a blessing. I suppose.

Once you've found the agent you're to rescue the game changes to... Skeet Shooting. Hurrah. Enemy helicopters roam the sky and you wait for them to come into your gunsight. When they do, you select left or right and fire and they die.

Skeet shooting was always my favourite bit in the multi-event sports sims so I enjoyed this. It's not terribly sophisticated for today's market, though, is it? Not really full price game material in 1993. More your budget release in 1987 I'd have said, but maybe my expectations are just a bit too high.

The graphics throughout are a bit budget-y too. They're very cartoon-like and again give the impression not of 20 quid's worth of '90s game but of a fiver's worth of '80s game. And the sound? Could do better.

And that's it, really. It's a fairly ordinary shoot-'em-up that's been fancied-up by giving it the plot of a hot modern game. You learn to control the helicopter with practice, but I wonder why you'd bother. If you bought this game without knowing anything about it, you wouldn't be too disappointed - it's a moderately competent shoot-'em-up and you can have a bit of fun with it if you make the effort.

But take my advice and don't bother with it all. Save up another tenner and get Desert Strike instead - you'll feel a whole lot better for it.

Originally this was going to get an average to poor review in the VFM section. It's a below standard shoot 'em up that is tired and dated in both presentation and gameplay. Still, it did have the saving grace of being cheap. Only it isn't. A quick call to the Codemasters office confirmed my fears. Firehawk is as overpriced as they come.

The game casts you as a gunship pilot with a limp, hired by the government to get in, complete a series of tasks and get out again. Missions include such inspired stuff as rescuing hostages and collecting paratroopers. All of this is done using a rotating helicopter flying over a 360 degree scrolling battlefield with few weapons, limited fuel and a poor defensive shield. All in all, it would be a poor man's Desert Strike, were it a lot cheaper.

The bulk of the game involves flying about the puny maps (four screens by four screens) shooting anything that moves and searching for hostages, whom you'll probably find in your first five second scan of the map. Move the helicopter over them, and lines will begin closing in around you to form a box. This is to tell you that the hostage is getting ready to board. As soon as the lines join, you can move into the really dire part of the game.

Cast your minds back to a game called Hypersports. In it was a clay pigeon shooting event which featured two gunsights. These only move up and down and automatically tracked the vertical position of the nearest target. You pressed the joystick left or right to fire the appropriate gun. It was a poor system, and one only acceptable because it was released in 1984. Nine years later it's a crime to use it again. What a terrible game.