Captain Skyhawk/Miller Genuine Draft

Game: Captain Skyhawk, Milton Bradley, 1989, NES
Beer: Miller Genuine Draft, 12 fl. oz., 4.66% abv
# of beers consumed during play: 4
Level Reached: Um, somewhere in the middle.
Level of Intoxication: Buzzed

Game
Some people may not remember this, but back when the videogame industry was still in its infancy, some of the major software developers were the same people who brought us board games. This is no longer the case since people quickly learned that making a good board game does not mean a company will also make a good videogame, and most of the aforementioned companies crawled back into their hidey-holes which smelled distinctly of die-cut tagboard and vacu-form plastic tokens. This review is about a little game by Milton Bradley, and perhaps if they had kept up the level of quality and playability that this game enjoyed, we would be living in a world that never knew Electronic Arts. Ah to dream...

Gameplay
In Captain Skyhawk, you pilot a jet. Not awesome enough you say? With this jet, you careen through tight canyons, blasting anything that is unlucky enough to be moving when you fly over. Yeah, that's more like it. Captain Skyhawk's gameplay is pretty tight, not only for an old-school NES game, but also for a game made by a company best known for Battleship, Yahtzee, and LIFE. In the game you will see three distinct level types, the isometric-overhead canyon runs, the behind-the-plane dogfighting sprees, and my personal favorite, the "dock with the space station for no discernible reason whatsoever" minigame. The plane controls smoothly, and you can even dive down low to the ground in the overhead levels. Why anyone would want to actually do that is beyond me since diving down only makes you more prone to enemy fire, canyon walls, angry mustachioed sphinxes, and mountains and trees jutting up into your path, all of which would love to take a big old bite out of your plane. Canyon walls are by far the most annoying, as there are certain sections where the canyons narrow down to practically nothing, and only precision flying will prevent you from steering your overly excitable jet into the surrounding terrain.


When I say your jet is overly excitable, I mean it...this is what I like to call a "tap-tap" game. Hold the control pad in any one direction for longer than a nanosecond and you'll watch as your aircraft zips across the screen at approximately the speed of light, frequently in an intersecting path with the game's many dangers. Thus the control method of choice is to gingerly tap in the direction you wish to go, which not only makes controlling your craft much easier, but also drastically increases your likelihood of getting arthritis later on in life. In addition to your plane controlling like a mosquito strung out on meth, there are additional levels which challenge your precision to a frightening degree. One such level entails you having to dock with a spinning space station, which is awesome because the docking bay is exactly the size of your plane, and the slightest miscalculation will result in a pretty explosion which is you. Successfully dock, and you will be allowed to purchase special weapons with money you received from the previous level where you flew around shooting enemy jet fighters. It's a bit cooler and well done than it sounds, and once you purchase your weapons of choice, you are once again released to do the trifecta of level types over again.

Your enemies encompass a whole range of appearances and abilities from run of the mill tanks and planes to the more esoteric volcanoes and previously mentioned sphinxes. They all have their own ways of impeding your progress, and if you manage to give them the slip, you will often find yourself face-to-face with a boss entity, which you'll have to hit a great number of times before it finally gives up.

All in all, the gameplay is difficult but not punishing, and the game lends itself to a pretty fun time once you get used to the controls and the varied level designs. Playing the Top Gun soundtrack is entirely optional.

Graphics/Sound
I'm actually rather impressed with the visuals in this one. For an NES game, it uses clean, clear graphics and bold designs to really make the point. The isometric perspective in the main levels really lends a surreal tint to the game as a whole, which works well and helps to sell the simple graphics. If this game had been cluttered with a lot of paintbrush effects and muddled sprites, it would have been much easier to crash into things, and a no-brainer to subsequently remove the cartridge from the safe, secure confines of the NES console and throw it against a cold, hard wall where it would shatter into millions of pieces. Fortunately, that isn't the case. The enemies and their resulting projectiles are very easy to see against the backgrounds, and they explode nicely into several pieces when shot.


The sounds are similarly rudimentary (really? For an NES game?), but do the job of immersing the player nicely. After about the third level, I got tired of the one explosion sound given to everything in the game and the constant grinding sound of your primary shot but really that's a minor complaint. The title music was especially nice, given that the rest of the game is rather unremarkable in the music category. If you're into a rockin' time when playing your games, perhaps you should listen to your iPod as you play this. Just a suggestion.

Story

Wikipedia says:

The player takes a role of a fighter pilot working to repel an alien invasion. Aliens have invaded Earth, and have built four land bases. These bases are designed to drain Earth's energy and feed it to their mother space station. If the space station is allowed to obtain enough energy, it will destroy the Earth with a massive laser blast. The player must destroy the enemy bases, then go after the space station itself. Scientists, during the course of the game, are working on a top-secret Neutron Cannon. During several missions, the player must make supply drops to the scientists working underground. Sometimes, the aliens will have a scientist captive. Then the player must defeat the alien base and take the scientist to safety.

Yeah, it's the typical aliens are doing the badness, you are the only guy left on the planet with the testicular fortitude to confront the unstoppable menace type story. To be perfectly honest, I would love to see a game where your character is the second fiddle. Believe it or not I get tired of seeing all these games where you are the singular hero who is going to snatch our beloved utopia from the jaws of oblivion. I wanna do the job that Wedge Antilles did in the Star Wars movies...solid, lifesaving backup. I'm tired of being The Hero, everybody shoots at him...I wanna be the guy that saves the hero's ass.

Beer
Miller Genuine Draft, hereafter referred to as MGD because it's easier to type while intoxicated, is a close contender for the quintessential American pisswater. For NASCAR fans who like their beer watery, flavorless, and extremely easy to drink over a rousing night of bigotry, this is one of the best. The color is most striking, it resembles urine in color and translucency at such an infinitesimal level that you'll never know if a disgruntled Miller employee "tainted" a particular bottle until you actually put it to your lips, at which time it'll be far too late to do anything about it. The odor is pretty much non-existent, you'll smell something in there, but it'll be faint and easy to ignore. The taste follows suit, by no means galvanizing, but at the same time, nothing that immediately associates itself with words like "good" "worthy", or even "palatable."

The beer's true saving grace is the drinkability. The carbonation is enough to refresh, but you can still knock these babies back like an alcoholic trying to summon an intervention. I finished one in under a minute, and I wasn't even trying to slam the bottle, it just happened, so if anything, the beer lends itself to very quick swigging and subsequent refills, and the fairly low alcohol content (a mere 4.66%) will keep most drinkers above table level for much of the evening. The downside is the feel it leaves with me. Perhaps this is only me, but I get a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach and a very unwelcome "defocused" sensation in my head. This is not a flavor of inebriation I typically enjoy, I have a hard time thinking, an even harder time putting together intelligent sentences, and before I know it, I'm waking up in a strange house with Kenny Loggins playing softly in the background. By any reckoning, it's a very dull drunk feeling, and one that I imagine recurs the next morning as you're trying to find your work boots.

The Matchup
The properties in this review each have a lot to offer. They both dwell in the land of just the slightest bit above average, and both are something that you'll either take to quickly or avoid like the plague. In speaking to their differences, Captain Skyhawk knows what it wants to be and caters to a relatively small core audience, while MGD tries to be everything for everyone, and falls slightly below expectation as a result of its indecisiveness. Of course, this is in comparison to all the other beers I've had, and really, when you look at some of the tankards of swill that I've foolishly allowed to enter my body, MGD begins to shine in its own right. Mediocrity isn't always a bad thing.

Cheers/Game on.