Soviet Strike

The long-awaited sequel to Electronic Arts "Strike" series made its formal debut at the E3 trade show last May. When the EGM editors first saw this game, it was love at first sight Officially titled Soviet Strike, EA has been working very quietly and secretly for the last year on creating the ultimate 32-Bit flying/battle simulation game. The game producers and directors, some of whose work dates back to the original 16-Bit Desert Strike, knew that this version had to create an experience for the player that never had been done before. Otherwise, the game would be just another "fun" game, lost in the crowd of other flying games this Christmas. And with the previous Strike games being the largest non-sports products that EA had, the staff set their sights high and started with a clean slate.

Led by the team of John Manley-game director, Rod Swanson-director, The Edge, Michael Becker-creative director The Edge, and backed by some of the most creative people in the industry, the group set out to mold the game idea. It had to be similar in concept to the previous games-the premise had to be plausible and something the player could relate to and get into. It also had to relate to something currently going on in the world. After kicking around some ideas, the focus shifted to Russia and the turmoil that was going on in the different parts of that country.

With the location decided upon, the staff went back into the other Strike games and did surveys as to what types of levels were the most popular with the players. They found that people loved to blow things up [but not mindlessly), there had to be people to rescue, clues to find and items to get to complete the missions.

These objectives had to be balanced but not to the point where the player became frustrated and quit. The replay value had to be there to keep the person engrossed in the game-a game, it turned out, quite similar to the first one in the series: Desert Strike.

With the concept and goal established, the next problem was to decide how to fill the massive amount of memory available on a CD game. This extra memory allowed the group to open up the horizons and do things that were unthinkable in the days of the 16-Meg carts. Things like really being able to kick up the emotional level in the game by including better sound, voices and video clips-lots of them, over 1,200 in totaL.so far. But this isn't another mindless motion-video game. These are all small clips which inform and tantalize the player. Audio and video which include actual battlefield reports, payoff cinemas, radio war drama-many of which are under user control. The video is windowed and presented in a CNN news style.

It is interspersed throughout the game and there to keep the player totally immersed in a real war. It gives the player a reason to get through each of the missions and to the madman at the end of the game.

Story aside, there had to be more eye candy. This is the 32-Bit generation and the days of barren sprite terrain or unrealistic-looking polygon pyramid-type cities don't sell anymore. The goal became to create a complete, rendered, rich landscape accurate to the smallest detail. As you can see from the above screen shots, they have accomplished this goal admirably.

Visual concepts worked out, the story had to be created. The first design script laid out the game features, the look and feel of the game, the art processes, the missions and campaigns. From there, they started doing the detailed script. To assure that it was done properly, they hired a professional writer to make sure that everything was well written.

That was a year ago. Since then the game has evolved into five highly detailed missions-any one of them could be a game in itself. Overall, the producers guarantee that this game will be more than a challenge to the best Strike experts in the nation. In total, they have estimated that there will be more than 100 hours of gameplay in Soviet Strike.

The game is nearing completion now and having played through just the first mission, our editors walked away totally amazed. Not since the release of the first Strike cart has there been a game that has caused such excitement and anticipation. Soviet Strike is easily, hands-down, the best flight/adventure game ever to be made-for any system.