Eagle One: Harrier Attack

Pros • You get to blow stuff up • Intuitive controls let flight-sim rejects soar • Five diverse aircraft with varied handling and widely varied mission profiles	Cons • The game is just good enough for me to want a little more depth and scenario realism beyond just the twitch-factor entertainment
Bottom Line Dig out your old Kenny Loggins album and fly into the danger zone with F-16's, Harriers, Stealth Jets and A-10 ground-pounders. Ever since I was a wee lad and I saw/heard/felt two A-10 Warthogs screech by 100 yards off the deck at a private air show, I've wanted to jump into the cockpit and fly one of those ungainly mutha's. Then I got older and discovered the joys of Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) and the amazing Harrier Jump Jet. Let's now warp forward to the present time and the excellent new flight combat release from Infogrames, Eagle One: Harrier Attack, which offers enough plane and mission variety to keep the ADD-club entertained without being too difficult for the legion of flight-sim rejects to play.

Back in the '80's, we wouldn't have had a game like Eagle One: Harrier Attack. No, not because the technology wasn't there, but because Magnum P.I. would've kept the Hawaiian Islands free from terrorist threats. But this is the year 2000 and Thomas Magnum is nowhere to be found, which may be the real reason that a secret cabal of terrorists zapped the Hawaiian Islands with an EMP device, thereby rendering all regional U.S. military bases non-operational. I can just picture those scruffy, unshaven terrorists chortling (oh yes, they definitely chortle) as they planned their attack, "We will capture the sunny beach-resorts of the capitalist American pig-dogs and bring them to their knees!" Whatever their motivation, the terrorists didn't count on the quick actions of the President, namely his mobilization of a Marine task force led by you.

Infogrames has stepped up to the plate and batted out a solid base-hit with Eagle One: Harrier Attack for the PSX. Not only are they giving PSX owners another enjoyable game while we all salivate and wait interminably for our PS2's, but they're hurling out exactly the sort of not-too-complex-but-still-exciting flight game console owners dig. I mean, if you want hardcore flight-sim, you play PC, right?

As the hero of the day, you'll fly more than 25 missions over the Pacific and the myriad Hawaiian Islands, from Maui to Luau to Pu Pu Platter (ok, those last two aren't really island names). Because the different missions pose sometimes radically different challenges, you'll periodically need to switch aircraft, using an F-16 Falcon for air-to-air, the ugly but tough A-10 for blowing the hell out of trucks, the too cool Harrier for a little of both, a rescue chopper for -take a wild guess -rescuing folks, and the (shhhh!) secret Raven Stealth Bomber. In Eagle One, however, it's not enough to just get the mission completed - you want to complete it with a high rate of accuracy and flight performance. If you meet these Top Gun standards, a few new missions open up for you as well as nifty new aircraft.

The locale being what it is, tempestuous Pacific storms play a factor in several missions. There's nothing like lightning and thunder to liven up an air-to-air battle against multiple enemy aircraft. The graphics looks good in Eagle One, with realistic lighting effects and clever little tricks that fog-obscure the pop-ups and the like. The 3D terrain is colorful and diverse (as it should be with a game set in Hawaii) and the other little touches all seem to be there, like the realistic contrails following the planes as they dart across the blue sky (Note to developers: Too bad there are no rescue missions over nude beaches).

In addition to single-player mode, Eagle One allows for two-player split-screen combat in either deathmatch mode or through four co-op missions. Although multiplay is, in a way, always more fun than single play, with Eagle One the single play is really where it's at, very much like other cool PSX titles such as Medal of Honor.

If you like the Ace Combat games, then Infogrames' new entry into the PSX-flight action arena should be right up your alley. Eagle One is a solid, enjoyable title for either a quick fix of action or a more dedicated you order the pizza and I'll grab a six pack spate of gaming.

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