Strikefleet

1987 video games Amiga games Apple games Commodore 64 games PC games Atari ST games

While flight simulators and submarine simulators were quite popular genre in early computer games the simulators of surface warships were not that popular and Strikefleet is shining example why.

Strikefleet offered chance to take a look at the early 1980s naval warfare, we take control of the NATO vessels during operations in Falklands, Persian Gulf, North Atlantic or North Sea. Strikefleet was developed by the Lucasfilm Games and is a shining example why surface vessels were never that popular in computer games. While submarines gave the opportunity to come up with some plan while approaching the enemy in case of the surface warships, especially after the long range radars were no longer a rarity, it is all up to who will detect the enemy first and has missiles with longer range, so not much drama there.

In Strikefleet we choose our fleet for each of the mission according to available "points" - better warships use more points, so we have to decide which class of the warship would suit best the tasks. The American destroyers and cruisers are available and during the missions we can switch between the ships that are in our command, also we can send helicopters to extend the range of detection and even take control of the helicopter itself (not that it is much different from taking control of the ship). Apart from that the list of available options were limited - as I wrote above modern warfare is all about detection and missiles with best range and Strikefleet is all about getting into range with the target and firing the missiles.

The game is sort-of-simulation since there is not much we can do here and even switching to helicopter views does not change much. Nevertheless it was an early surface warships simulator.

Our rating
★★☆☆☆

Video
★★☆☆☆

Audio
★☆☆☆☆

Playability
★★☆☆☆