Touch Arcade:
1942: First Strike is said to be inspired by the game 1942: Joint Strike that graced the Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network a couple years ago. While those games were slightly mundane gameplay-wise, they at the very least showcased some excellent 3D high def graphics that really brought the classic franchise into this new generation. This is not the case here. The iPhone version features tiny plane and enemy sprites and boring backdrops. It's colorful, but not very interesting. The music is really quite excellent, but the sound effects lack any substance and destroying enemies is met with a whimper rather than a boom.
NZGamer: Owned a Sega MegaDrive back in the day? You might remember Streets of Rage, a side-scrolling eighties beat-em-up that managed to overcome its rather banal gameplay with a great soundtrack and a decent co-op mode. In what is surely a financially driven move (read: quick buck) Sega have decided to port their minor classic onto the iPhone.
Pocket Gamer:
Even though I've seen Saving Private Ryan and all ten hours of Band of Brothers, I'm grudgingly prepared to admit that I don't really have battlefield experience.
To the soldiers who fought in the Second World War, the ordeal was long and brutal. To me, it's usually over in an afternoon, and not very dangerous.
In a way, 1942: First Strike bears a similar relation to the 1942 that came to the arcades in 1984. The original is brutal, thrilling, and comes with a life expectancy of about a minute. The new one is gentle, attenuated, and comes with a life expectancy almost as long as the game itself.
Game Vortex writes: "1942: First Strike] is the game that you're playing when your girlfriend is taking way too long in Forever21, and you're sitting outside and you're just like 'Alright, fine...'" Those are the exact words I heard from Capcom's Mike Larson at E3. Nobody could have come up with a better description for the game. This is a title that knows its role in the handheld space; it offers a quick distraction from the kinds of situations that most gamers usually want to escape. First Strike isn't the kind of game you'll want to play when you're reclining on your sofa, but if you're on the go and want to get a really quick arcade fix, this game will do you right."
