Another review already? Yeah, I mean... I might as well. There's a void in my soul. I figure that as long as I keep tossing reviews into this void, it'll fill eventually. Kind of sucks being born too late to make a difference in the world and born too foolish to hold onto the few good things that life gave me. At least I have Line of Fire for the Sega Master System. Jeeze. There's that foul taste of Friday morning again. I understand that the rest of the world looks forward to Fridays, because it means the weekend. I work weekends, so Fridays are just the descent into hell. Not even a fun rollercoaster descent either. More like, I don't know, riding a rickety barrel down a waterfall that's made of broken glass... descent.
Anyhoo, Line of Fire is a shmup of sorts for Sega's classic 8-bit hardware. Hop in your jeep and blaze a trail of destruction through six stages, each ending in a boss. Standard stuff, besides the part about the jeep. This is a different STG, sometimes in a good way, sometimes not. You don't get free reign of the entire screen. Instead, you can only get as far as the center, where your ride will speed up slightly. This is essential for stage 2, as that extra boost is required to jump over cliffs. Whoops. Getting ahead of myself for the 349th time. The jeep has a standard machine gun and a limited supply of ground-to-air rockets. Adversaries attack from both land & sky, so use the respective weapons to eliminate them. It's actually a neat little feature, definitely deserving a checkmark under the "Good Different" column in my nonexistent chart.
Also "Good Different" is related to that bit I alluded to about jumping over cliffs. Reaching that necessary speed is sometimes finicky, and there was one time I couldn't make a jump. Death via falling is particularly awful, since in this game players have a health meter, but only get three lives. Losing one in an instant is going to hurt badly. On the kind-of kickass side is the fact that later on, the boss is a helicopter. Sure, you could bring it down with rockets, or you could jump off of ramps and bring the behemoth down with a machine gun. It's this sort of schlocky goodness that I wish Line of Fire had more of.
The next two stages take place on a boat, and then the jeep again. Both have ways of standing out from what comes before and after, giving this shmup a decent variety. Some aspects don't always land, however. Your rockets are controlled while they're in the air, whether you want them to or not. Sometimes this works in your favor, like for taking out the cliffside turrets in stage 4. Other times, you fire a rocket and dodge an enemy's bullet, only for that rocket to veer off target and offscreen. It's tricky setup, and to an extent I get why the dev-team decided on it, but wasting rockets in a critical situation is never fun.
The last two stages have you piloting a chopper. Sure enough, that means your guns eliminate air targets and those rockets should be saved for anything on the ground. It's a cute idea that works well enough. Only problem is that stage 5 places you in the crosshairs of several enemy rockets. They're pretty obnoxious to dodge, though you might not get that impression from a long-play video posted on Youtube. Perhaps there is a specific movement pattern that renders them nearly harmless, but first-time players are unlikely to stumble upon it. The finale is a massive fortress. Be sure to take out the trains beforehand to grab medkits and rockets. Afterwards, it's mainly a matter of timing your attacks so you can destroy the laser cannons. Dodging bullets that are coming from multiple angles is tricky, but the real threat is going to be the lasers.
Line of Fire is fine, I guess. There are some cool moments that'll really make you think "Yeah, I'm glad they did that." Other times, particularly the aforementioned part with the rockets, you'll probably wish you were somewhere else. Still, give it a shot if you're curious. As for me, I'm going to spend the rest of the morning deep in existential dread as I wait for work to begin. 20+ years in the service industry has left me with a broken spirit and a deep hatred for anyone who refers to me as "brother", "bro", "my friend", "pal", "buddy", "boss", "my dude".
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