| A homage to the games of old, Red Shark brings together arcade classics like Choplifter with a modern console feel of Acclaim's award winning PlayStation 2 helicopter game Fireblade. Red Shark was developed by a Russian game developer called G5 and is a good old fashioned shoot em up arcade game. The words Russian may be ringing alarm bells in gamers all around the world but don't let the country of development scare you away because Serious Sam, now a world wide hit was developed in Czechoslovakia. The storyline of Red Shark is set in 2010 where the Russians have developed a time machine that they plan to use to change history. By sending an ace pilot (you) and the world's most sophisticated helicopter back in time to World War II, they plan on eliminating the number of Russian casualties. The plot may sound a little far fetched but in theory, if you had a time machine, wouldn't you try to change the tides of war. The gameplay of Red Shark involves a variety of missions set in World War II such as escorting Russian military units to key points and hunt and destroy missions. There are a total of 15 missions in Red Shark that contain three different campaign settings such as the Western Front, North Africa and various missions that are located in the Soviet Union itself. The controls in Red Shark are exceptional if you have a PC USB gamepad as it handles almost like a true arcade/console game. Even with the mouse/keyboard configuration, the game controls are quite effective. Graphically, Red Shark isn't the most impressive arcade game on the market at the moment but on the PC, it's quite acceptable. Many of the terrains are quite detailed and contain an exceptional amount of trees and various terrain effects. Unfortunately many of the units in the game such as tanks and troops appear quite small and have a fairly low polygon count. The game maintains a constant frame rate even when there are literally dozens of enemy units on the screen at once and the game does not stagger at all. It should also be noted that the gaming environments are huge and the developers boast that the maps are 256 square kilometres. Red Shark also has some extremely detailed and great looking explosions that are one of the key attributes to arcade games. Red Shark doesn't offer much when it comes to music but it does offer some interesting action midi tunes to keep the game interesting. The sound effects of Red Shark feature the usual bells and whistle such as explosions, gun fire and missile sound effects. | 
