Jackal

"Where's the jackals?"

What's a jackal? A jackal is a small canine animal, with a sleek body and pointed ears. Jackals live alone or in pairs. They hunt small prey such as young gazelles. Jackals are commonly found in the African plains. They come in several varieties, differing mostly in appearance rather than behaviour.

Story (three out of ten)

As a side-striped jackal, you must take an armed jeep into the zoo and rescue the other jackals, fighting through dangerous zookeepers and other defences... Just kidding.

Okay, the real story isn't nearly as original. Very typical. Nothing new. Not fresh at all. Sort of like a carcass when all the vultures have picked off all the meat. The objective is to rescues some POW's from enemy territory. Yes, you probably have heard this a million times already in various movies. I would have upped the score if they had jackals driving the jeep thingy...

Graphics (seven out of ten)

The game's graphics are decent. There is a nice three dimensional perspective, and the buildings are nicely detailed. The sprites are kind of simplistic in terms of animation, but they aren't too bad. The backgrounds are pretty good too. On the negative side, the explosions aren't too good. They look a bit cheap. Overall, the graphics are okay, but aren't using the NES's full perspective.

Sound Effects (seven out of ten)

At least it isn't all bleeping. The sound effects are good, but not really noteworthy. I really can't say much else on the subject.

Music (eight out of ten)

Great music... It's a bit catchy, and quite appropriate. However, I would have expected better from Konami (after all, they did the AWESOME soundtrack for Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake).

Gameplay (eight out of ten)

Lotsa action. Blasting through legions of enemy tanks, soldiers, emplacement defences, ships, etc. makes up most of the game. You have two weapons, some sort of gun and some explosives (grenades at first, missiles of increasing power later). The other part involves blowing up enemy POW camps and rescuing the captives. Some of the POW's will give you a new explosive weapon. Sometimes, pieces of the background break off and fall over, which might crush your jeep.

You can only take one hit before dying, but you have several lives and continue at the same point where you died. There are no passwords or save features, so unless you have an emulator, you'll have to play through every level every time...

Jackal-ness (five out of ten)

Jackals, as I mentioned above, operate alone or in pairs. In the game Jackal, you can play alone or with a second player, and cooperate towards an objective the way real jackals would. The game is action-oriented, without real stealth (like Metal Gear)... And real jackals aren't too keen on stealth. But jackals are never seen in this game, not even as a mascot (like Fox-Hound's fox from MG2).

Pros: Lots of action, easy to learn, decent music and graphics, SFX aren't too annoying, cool name.
Cons: No actual jackals, one-hit-kills, no save or passwords... and a total lack of hyenas!!! How could they!!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/13/02, Updated 09/13/02