Scorched Planet was developed by Criterion Software and released in 1996 by Virgin. It's a 3D Choplifter game with additional gimmicks. I had hard time finding any gameplay videos online. I've tried this one back in the days, but never got to end of world 2 before. Save items found inside levels are required for saving. I used about one save for every three levels (one world), but there is one save item for each level.

I'm playing on easiest difficulty for one reason. At the beginning of the world 2 fuel tank gets broken and getting fuel needed to save colonists becomes extremely tedious. Flying ability is limited to few seconds with full tank on medium difficulty. Player is supposed to use colonists for hauling fuel close to space gate. Unfortunately, there are only few fuel pods in some of the levels and waiting colonists to haul those takes a very long time. It is really boring and colonists might get lost along the way. After they finish hauling, fuel can be picked up to save few colonists. After all that is done you'll need to wait for new fuel pods to respawn and that alone can take a long time. Then you can repeat the process to save the next batch of colonists and so on. No fuel drops from enemies either, except on easy difficulty. Moving with the tank is also very slow.

I try to show some intended gimmicks for different type of missions even if it wasn't always necessary on this difficulty. Some nice ideas behind this game, but IMO it wasn't properly playtested for different difficulty modes. Controls are not excellent either, especially with the tank where you have to control the turret to shoot anything above or below. With the space ship you can move / aim up or down more easily, but the game tries to force horizontal plane. You can do instant 180 degree turns with both the tank and the ship. That helps with controlling, but might be confusing to watch on video. SP is a bit repetitive, even with the gimmicks, because combat itself isn't very interesting. The 3 second action / danger music loop quickly becomes annoying as well.

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