Get blasting!
It's horizontally scrolling shooter time once more and if you've had your fill of Blood Money, Forgotten Worlds or even good old Gradius, you should get a fairly hefty kick out of Fire Wind. After an impressively 90s bit of opening cutscene fun, which tells the usual sci-fi nonsense storyline about a bunch of aliens out to destroy the universe, you get thrown into the action pretty much straight away. Just to set things on the level from the start though, there's nothing original here and everything you would expect from such a game is present. The first port of call is to choose one of three ships to deal death from and then it's on to the game proper. As this is a horizontally scrolling shooter, the gameplay simply consists of flying your dinky little craft from left to right, blasting away at the seemingly endless waves of aliens who are keen to blast you into oblivion. Of course, there are powerups to collect, which are activated immediately and which help to even the odds a litle by providing such useful things as improved firepower. In between levels you can pop into a handy shop to spend your hard earned points on more upgrades like better weapons and health. That's about all there is to the game to be honest and as long as you don't go in expecting too much, you won't be disappointed. The action is certainly fast and frenetic and should keep even hardened shooter fans tested for a while, while the visuals are pleasing on the eye, with lots of cool ships, some nice environments and of course plenty of explosions to keep you amused. Fire Wind doesn't do anything new with the genre but it is fun, so if you like this sort of thing, take a closer look.
