YMMV / Strike Series

• Good Bad Bugs: During the Caspian mission in Soviet Strike, advancing enemy units will sometimes manage to squeeze in close and block each other's path, bringing the entire force behind them to a standstill. This is a welcome boon that allows the player to focus on other spearheads.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In Urban Strike, released in 1994 and set in 2001, the villain H.R. Malone fires a satellite laser beam at New York, destroying many buildings. You also have to rescue civilians from the World Trade Center AND defuse a bomb that has been planted within it.
  • Malone himself is a billionaire tycoon who ran for President a few years earlier but lost. The game's intro sequence shows a brash, rabble-rousing, right-wing political maverick promising to "take back America" and show "our so-called leaders how America ought be run". We then learn that he raised an army of fanatical followers and has bought up lots of real estate throughout the country (to build his bases on). Two decades on...
  • The very first mission of Soviet Strike is about taking out a former KGB operator in Crimea, which was erroneously labeled as being in Russia. 17 years later, well, not so erroneous anymore...
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the final level of Nuclear Strike, the T-90 is one of the main ground vehicle enemies you have to face which can take multiple Hellfire missile hits to destroy and moves around the ground quite quickly. Well, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine it was found that the tank only takes one missile hit to destroy, or sometimes even just a drone launching an improvised bomb into the open top hatch of one to turn the tank into a jack-in-the-box for the turret, because of a glaring design flaw regarding ammunition storage.
• Nightmare Fuel: The cacophony that accompanies the "SNAFU!" message whenever you fail an objective in the Playstation games. Especially bad is when it suddenly pops up when you weren't even aware you did anything wrong.
• Obvious Beta: Mission 4 of Soviet Strike climaxes in an Enemy Civil War between Vila Ceausescu and Dr. Ukranian. Or at least that's what was supposed to happen, as the final objective seems to have been rushed: Vila's tank is nigh-invulnerable, and while she one-shots several of Ukranian's lesser goons on her way to fight him, she's incapable of harming him or the player. The player themselves can't hurt Ukranian or his elite bodyguards, who don't move or react to being attacked by you or Vila in any way. The "recommended" way of completing this mission requires the player to wait for Vila to reach the graveyard (whereupon she endlessly and ineffectually fires at Ukranian while he and his bodyguards stare off into space) and then drop a nearby tombstone on her. Trying to fight her "normally" will take your entire ammo reserves and then some. Somewhat lampshaded as Hack tells you that both Vila's and Ukranian's tanks are custom models with lots of extra armor and that they don't care about you, only about killing their rival. In the same mission, the UN forces are duking it out with Ukranian's men. You somehow can't damage them until you've dropped Amad to take command of the UN forces.
• Polished Port:
  • The Amiga port for Desert Strike features improved audio and graphics and lots of other added touches such as scenery objects and clutter in the levels not found in any other version. On the downside, it runs slightly slower than the original.
  • Soviet Strike is 3D, but its Sega Saturn version adds analog controls, has more detailed textures and extra wingtip weapons than the PlayStation version while running at roughly the same framerate.
• Retroactive Recognition: The FMV clips in Nuclear Strike were Moon Bloodgood's first filmed role.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The controls for the on-foot missions in Urban Strike are ropey to say the least. Probably why subsequent games did away with them.
  • Rescuing people from water in the Jungle and Urban, moreso the former because you're limited to the Comanche's six-person hold forcing you to hit up the landing zone; Urban at least introduced a special high capacity chopper for its mission. Either way, you have to work fast to get them to safety before they drown while also not getting knocked backwards by running into a structure near where they're floating.
• So Bad, It's Good: The intro FMV cutscenes for the PC version of Jungle Strike outright make the ones in Command & Conquer look Oscar-worthy.
• That One Level:
  • The 4th Mission along the Korean DMZ in Nuclear Strike can become ridiculous if you have no idea on what to do and where to go. It's bad enough that the KPA will send shit-tons of vehicles at you but the fact that they have underground tunnels to help them safely bypass your allies and get to the other side will change the problem to a headache in the long run. There are also a few SCUD launchers that will destroy some vital facilities and supplies if they're not dealt with right away.
    • To elaborate, your first objective is to pick up Andrea. No enemies to contend with, you have a generous time limit, about the only way to fail at this stage is to go north and destroy a building. Your second objective is to do what you can in an all out war, with enemy subs, commandos, tanks, scud launchers and troop transports all doing their level best to wipe out your allies before the entire North Korean army make their way south. If your name happened to be God-Mode Sue you might be able to scrape by with minimal casualties, if not the best you can do is hold off the main attack force enough until reinforcements arrive.
    • Guide Dang It! ensues that you supposedly use the generous time limit of the first objective to scout your own border and discover additional vehicles you can use.
  • The Caspian mission in Soviet Strike is a less polished version of the above. There is no grace period at the start, the enemies will start trundling from one edge of the map towards the other immediately. The enemy also has three long-range SCUD missiles aimed at friendly resources. While in the DMZ you can give orders to friendly forces just by hovering above them and pointing to a target on the map, here you need to go pick up a friendly commander and drop them off at the point where you want their forces deployed, one at a time. At least there are no tunnels this time.