Desert Falcon

"Lack luster"

Though Desert Falcon is a nice looking game graphically, it is not very fun to play. In this game, you play as a falcon questing for precious gems and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs hidden in the desert. These items are hidden on the ground of the desert and can be picked up by walking over them. Your falcon can fly at different elevations or traverse by foot on the ground. Your enemies are these hang glider looking things, beetles, the Sphinx's and various other things. By running into these, getting shot, or running into almost anything causes you to lose a life. There are four difficulty levels, and the hardest one is quite challenging.

The game is taken from an offset bird's eye view or the desert. Your falcon is always in the lower left corner of the screen and must progress in the up right direction. Once you have moved forward, you cannot move backward as, by pressing down, you begin to fly. Every once in a while, day will change to night, and night to day. This doesn't make much of a difference in game play, but just gives the sense of time. By picking up artifacts, you will gain special power like invincibility, quick shots, and warp speed just to name a few. Your major enemies that serve as bosses are the Sphinx's which will shoot projectiles at you and are also a major spawn point for other enemies. Killing them takes quite a lot of work, unless you have the right magical powers. Unfortunately, almost everything in the environment of this game is interactive. This means that if you walk into a pyramid at a slow rate, you will die. This gets very aggravating at times.

Graphics
The graphics were definitely the best part of this game. They were pretty high quality compared to most other Atari 7800 games. The graphics looked better than most NES games to give you an idea of how good they were. Everything was pretty well detailed just to give that game the sense of realism that is missing from most Atari 7800 games. Even though the graphics were great, most stuff went downhill from there.

Sound
The sound was also pretty decent. The sound effects were nothing special but the music is what I liked most. The music was a pretty catchy tune, but unfortunately for some reason whenever you started to walk, the music would stop playing. If you stop moving, the music would continue. This was kind of disappointing since the music was very cool.

Controls
I didn't particularly like the controls. One thing I don't like is that you can't walk backwards, so if you miss something, there is no going back. The right action button uses special magical abilities and the left button is to fire at enemies. You moved your falcon by using the directional pad, but when you press down, your falcon goes airborne. I think it is way too easy to accidentally cause your falcon to start flying which will really mess with your score and cause you to lose many lives.

Replay Value
I really don't think this game is worth playing much after you experience it the first time. The game isn't really that enjoyable to play and doesn't offer much excitement in game play. The game becomes very repetitive and boring after a while.

Final Words
Desert Falcon wasn't a terrible game, but it also wasn't really all that great. The controls are a little iffy and the game play itself is very boring and repetitive. The graphics and sound were really the only great parts of the game, and even they had their flaws. I probably wouldn't recommend buying this game.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/24/06