Game of the Day - Hellfire

Hellfire is by most measures a pretty standard late 80s horz shooter.  The graphics are nice and sharp but not very inspired.  The sound and other details are good but not great.  Why is it a GOTD?  For a couple of reasons that are related to one another.

First, the enemies shoot at you and come at your from all directions - in front, behind, in tiny crevices, at difficult angles, etc.  Some of the stationary guns can be hard to reach or shoot at because they are protected by walls on either side and at difficult angles.... That bring us to the second reason why I like this game - controlling where your guns fire.

Obviously, there are lots of games that let you control what angle or where you are firing from/at.  Sometimes it's just your gun, sometimes it's an accompanying drone.  But with Hellfire it is more primarily integrated into the design of the game.  The second button simply chooses where your fire goes - front, back, up & down, or all four diagonals.  Again, this isn't totally unusual, but in Hellfire you use it all the time because of where and how the enemies come at you.  Some you can only get with the up & down, some you need the diagonal because they are buried and protected with angled walls.

It's clear that in the programming for this game a lot of thought went into the use of the different gun angles and where and how to use them against varying enemies.  There is no game I've played where I use the button to adjust where I'm shooting as often as Hellfire.