Operation Wolf

This game reminds me of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Commando.  The movie Commando was about  Schwarzenegger's character being an ex special forces solider who goes after a dictator who captured his daughter.  The movie's climax is when Schwarzenegger basically kills a small army while looking for his daughter in the dictator's compound.  Tweak the story a little and take the climax from the movie and you have Operation Wolf.

In Operation Wolf you play a special forces solider who is sent behind enemy lines to rescue some prisoners of war (POWs). The game is a side scrolling shooter were the game screen moves on its own and all you do is aim and shoot.  Enemies appear from both sides of the screen shooting at you.  The majority of your enemies are are soldiers, but you also have to contend with helicopters, vehicles and in one instance boats.    Each level does introduce a new type of solider, however they are all mostly the same.

 The game is broken into six levels and one random encounter. There is some randomization in which order you do the levels but the first, fifth and sixth level are fixed.  The level designs are all basically the same but graphically look different.  Each level does have ammo and grenade drops scattered throughout along with rare health items and other items.  

Speaking of combat, you have two options, your machine gun which  is your primary weapon and grenades which are basically one shot on kill blast radius items.  Ammo is important since if you run out you loose.  Machine gun ammo is pretty easy to get while grenades are a little more rare.  If your not paying attention, it is easy to run out of ammo.

You can controller the on screen cross hair with the controller which gives you the option to increase or lower the speed  of it.  This is a nice option which does seem to help with aiming if needed however you can only change this option at the start of the game.  You can also use a Zapper light gun to controller the machine gun.  While this is nice and functional, I always found the controller to be a better option.  Also, newer TVs don't support the light guns.

One thing I liked about this game is the UI.  While it is simplistic, I liked how it shows you how many of each enemy is left and the health bar is very prominent.  I also liked the difficulty of the game.  While the first stage isn't too bad the games later levels start getting tougher with civilian characters running across the screen  getting in your way.  The enemy also seems to get more aggressive with there shooting.       

This is a short game though.  Beating all the stages will take you about 20 minutes or less.  While the game says it supports a higher difficulty each time you beat the game, its still the same game with the exact same levels.  What is nice about the game is that you can throw it in, play for a little and if you beat it great, if not you only lost maybe 10 to 15 minutes.

Overall the game is simple, fun and short.  There is some difficulty but its not crazy hard.  I will admit, I have seen that death screen more times than I can count.