A.S.P.: Air Strike Patrol (1994)

This game would not work on either of my PSP emulators so I had to play it on pc. I was able to play it enough on PSP to learn the controls but it would lock up after the 1st sortie. The helicopter Strike series and Super Strike Eagle are some of my favorite SNES games, so I was excited to play this. I started on Hard and it was intense. The enemy tanks were the largest threat. Not sure if their projectile was supposed to be the main cannon or a machine gun, but they were crack shots, firing from off screen at the perfect angle to hit a full speed jet. Not realistic at all. And they had homing missiles. It was like they were mammoth tanks from Command and Conquer hacked to allow shells to hit air units. They did seem to have much poorer accuracy when directly above them. You would think the tanks would be optimised to fight ground units, like they are in real life. Survival was about flying full speed bobbing and weaving to avoid shots, dropping chaff against missiles (or trying to out run and shake them off by zig zagging), then trying to line the crosshair up with enemies. Which was easier said than done given how far zoomed in the screen was. I usually needed to slow down to hit accurately, which was a risk. Either that or know where the enemies were and circle back. Dog fighting was not fun at all. The enemy migs could make tighter turns, so trying to turn around was fruitless. The only way I could beat them was to take advantage of their faster minimum speed by going slow and letting them overtake me. Or be fancy about it and go fast then slam on the brakes.

I was not a fan of the AGM because I found the automatic target lock to more often do what I did not want. Either locking on to a random enemy (or ally) when I wanted to use manual aim, or failing to lock on when I wanted it to. I stopped using that and instead started with the AAMs to shoot down enemy planes, then the A10 with smart bombs (which had no automatic targeting) to destroy air bases under the assumption that would prevent enemy planes. Unfortunately I was not able to beat the game even with heavy save state scumming, slowing game speed, and cheating. I had to cheat to get past the chemical weapon plants mission using the super A10 code, which allowed the gatling gun to destroy buildings. I tried the gun without the code and it did nothing to buildings, even grounded jets, SCUD launchers, fuel tanks and ammo stores. What the hell? Using the infinite cannon to destroy weak enemies and structures while saving limited better weapons for threats was staple gameplay in the Strike series. This game was much more fun with this cheat enabled, especially given how much harder it was to hit enemies with the gun. Optimal play on Hard was bombing units and shooting buildings. Despite this I could not beat the 2nd last level. Possibly because I was not skilled enough to shoot down all 5 migs in 1 sortie, or needed to use the gun to kill units while saving bombs only for buildings, or because my political support score was way into the negatives from killing too many civilians. Not my fault the bad guys put their units and bases so close to civilians, and my incompetent ground allies made me deal with so many anti air units that I could barely manage to survive and sometimes missed. Whatever it was I did not have enough sorties to win, and accidentally saved over the backup save state.

I started over on Easy. I wanted to better understand the mechanics because I was making a lot of assumptions, and there was no walkthrough or manual to read. I assumed that destroying optional stuff would make the game easier. Destroy air bases and grounded planes to avoid dog fights, destroy ground bases to make ground units easier, destroy radar and oil to make everything easier. I saw no evidence that any of this was true, and I even seen the enemy migs return during a mission after I shot them down and destroyed the airbases. It also seemed that things like grounded planes, helicopters, supply boxes, towers and pillboxes did not matter for destruction of bases. Easy slowed down the attack speed of ground units, making them easier to dodge and kill with the gun by flying slower. Dog fights were vastly different and actually fun. The migs would come in for attack then fly away in a wide circle to come in again. I would turn around and give chase, having to lead shots and adjust speed to stay on them. It was much better than the cheese required for Hard. I beat the game without trouble then tried a dog fight on Normal; it was more like Hard but not quite as ridiculous. Then I went through on Hard using the A10 cheat each time and playing optimally since I knew what had to be destroyed for each mission. I used the AAM for 1st sortie to shoot down the 5 migs, and learned how to do it in a single sortie. Had to go slow to conserve fuel and try to stay away from ground enemies. The best way was to lock on as they approached and fire the missile point blank. That was the only sensible way to deal with the hardest red migs. They must have had alien tech because the only way to get them off my tail was to use the afterburner to zoom away and hope I had enough distance to turn around and get a lock. In practice this just wasted fuel and I hard core save state scummed instead. I had good politics this time but the 2nd last mission was tough with so many ground units, and I hit a few civilian buildings. Ah screw it there was only 1 more mission. The final mission only allowed 2 sorties and was packed with ground units and the final boss. There was no time to shoot down migs so I had to go the whole time getting shot at from both ground and air. I approached from the south east skirting around as much as possible, then spent the 1st sortie clearing ground units with cluster bombs and killing 1 part of the boss. Next sortie I won.

I was disappointed that there was not more. All the mention of UFOs and aliens yet there was no alien boss. I was also disappointed with enemy variety; no choppers, no infantry, guard towers and gun turrets were just cosmetic, no AA guns, IFVs, APCs, etc. Though I did see ally ground forces kill enemies a couple times, they failed to bother attacking buildings. I think the game would have been much better with more strategic depth; actual significant effects for destroying bases, and competent ground forces that could help achieve objectives. More anti ground units too so it does not seem like everything is there just to counter you. I did not like the time limits, and the UI in between missions was awkward. It would have been nice if supplies could be found on the map, like fuel, ammo or something to increase the time limit. I would have liked to be able to view the map showing enemy positions while flying like in the Strike games, and have it simultaneously show everything rather than having to cycle.

This game has so much in common with the Strike series that it ranks up there with them as one of the best SNES games. Is it better than the Strike series? No, I think they are about on par with slightly different pros and cons.

9.0/10