Game of the Day - Operation Wolf

 Operation Wolf is a first-person, cross-hair shooter with lots of action.  In fact, the word "Operation" is not a misnomer.  In this game you actually play thru stages (missions) to accomplish an overall goal of rescuing hostages.  Each mission has a specific goal, but mostly it's just shoot the bad dudes and not the good dudes (or chicks).

Like all games of this ilk, I use the trackball instead of a light gun.  The set-up I have does not have a light gun, but most games play very well (some even better) when you are whipping the trackball around.  And you don't have to squint your eye.

You have two buttons: gun and grenade.  The grenade will kill everything on the screen, so don't use it when there are civilians around.  Killing them = Bad.  There are medical nurses, idiot kids, wussy dudes and the ubiquitous bikini-clad girls running around screaming.  There is also some variation in the enemy soldiers as in later stages a guy wearing a bullet-proof vest shows up and you have to shoot him in the head to kill him fast (he grabs his face) - otherwise it takes a lot of ammo to bring him down.

There are also chickens, pigs, coconuts and other things that will give you power-ups when you shoot them.  Luckily, you don't actually kill the animals (that'd be sad), but some of them you have to pop several times for them to cough up a health drink, gun mag or grenade.  The best power up doesn't appear until the last couple of stages - it's a rapid-fire machine gun on a timer - blast away.

You don't even see the hostages until near the end.  When you do, you have to make sure you protect them which means they have to run until they reach the left edge of the screen... if they do that, they are safe until the next level.  Of course you get more points for saving more hostages.  On the next level, they come out of the right and have to board an airplane on the left (you know, to fly home).  Again, you have to protect them by shooting the baddies and not accidentally capping your own.

A lot of the screen is taken up on the right by mission info, but in this case, I like it.  It shows your life force, the number of enemies BY TYPE you need to kill to finish the mission, your number of gun magazines and number of grenades.  The enemies by type is important in deciding when to use your grenades.

One whole operation is just six missions.  But if you finish, you start again and it is WAY harder.  I got smeared on the first mission without a chance when I played it the second time around.

It's good blasting fun, especially with a trackball, but a joystick works also.