Air Conflicts: Aces of World War II Hands-on
It would seem that videogames and World War II go together better than Brad and Angelina. Every year, a handful or first-person shooters and a bunch of flight games are set in the era, and people keep buying them up. Sadly, this overabundance of historical warfare doesn't usually bleed over to the PSP, but Graffiti Entertainment and Cowboy Rodeo are looking to change that with Air Conflict: Aces of World War II, a PSP title that's going to put you in the cockpit of 17 planes in more than 240 missions.
In Air Conflicts, you'll be able to either jump into one of several campaigns or take to the skies as part of an ad-hoc multiplayer match for up to eight players. When your boot up Air Conflicts and choose to go solo, you'll enter a name for your pilot and then pick which country you're going to fly for -- the British Royal Air Force, the German Air Force known as Luffwaffe, USSR, or U.S. Air Force.
Get'em in your crosshairs.
What's interesting about this is the fact that there are three or four campaigns for each country, and advancing in them seems to be optional. See, after choosing to be red, white and blue, I went through the typical training that taught me how to use my machine guns with the X Button, how to shoot rockets with Triangle, and how to drop bombs with the Square Button, but after that, I was tossed into the unforgiving world of aerial warfare. I'd go after some Germans over Leipzig, get the crap shot out of me, and crash. Rather than replaying the missions, a screen from HQ would summarize the loss and talk about me bailing out but still advance the story. So, rather than replaying these missions until I got it right, the war went on and the fools in Washington kept assigning me new planes to wreck.
As far as the actual nuts and bolts of gameplay is concerned -- remember that this is just a preview of the game and there's still a lot of time to go -- Air Conflicts seems to be a mixed bag. I enjoy dogfighting as much as the next guy, but the reticule's pretty small in this one and it makes getting a good bead on an enemy tough. That frustration is only exacerbated by the limited number of bullets and missiles you're given. Although my favorite part of Air Conflicts is the bombing runs -- where you tap down on the D-Pad to switch to a below the belly view as you drop your payload -- you only get a couple of bombs for every mission so you end up having to use missiles or machine guns on ground-based encampments. It's fun to chase enemies, but you don't take damage for your planes colliding.
Beyond that, Air Conflicts isn't doing much for me visually. The planes look alright -- even better when they're going down in flames and leaving a billowing smoke trail -- but the ground textures are bland and blocky. The trees are sparse, and it's hard to pick out ground objectives as you come up on them. The HUD looks OK -- complete with a damage gauge, RADAR, compass, and speed tracker -- However, the biggest visual "WTF?" is the font this game uses. Before every mission you get a screen briefing you on the story and objectives, from the pause screen you can take a look at the goals, and there's the summary after the mission -- all of this is written in a font that is somewhere around the size 6 or 7 mark by my best estimates in Microsoft Word. I'm not exaggerating; this stuff is tiny, hurts my eyes, and is completely nonsensical seeing as how much text there is to read in the title.
Another odd choice is the musical score accompanying Air Conflicts. At the main menu, there's a cheery beat with a steady snare drum-like sound that in no way gets you pumped up for war. It's almost the type of tune I'd expect to play during a JRPG cutscene of people eating ramen around a fire and discussing their schoolwork. Inside the actual game, the uplifting tunes continue and there's even a cheery "Flight of the Bumblebee" knockoff.
Air Conflicts: Aces of World War II is coming to a store near you on March 15, 2009. My time with the preview build raised a few red flags, but the fact that you can have nine pilot slots means that it'll be easy to try all of the campaigns, it supports Game Sharing, there are stats to monitor, and that dogfighting can be fun means that would-be pilots should keep an eye out for our full review in a few weeks.
In Air Conflicts, you'll be able to either jump into one of several campaigns or take to the skies as part of an ad-hoc multiplayer match for up to eight players. When your boot up Air Conflicts and choose to go solo, you'll enter a name for your pilot and then pick which country you're going to fly for -- the British Royal Air Force, the German Air Force known as Luffwaffe, USSR, or U.S. Air Force.
Get'em in your crosshairs.
What's interesting about this is the fact that there are three or four campaigns for each country, and advancing in them seems to be optional. See, after choosing to be red, white and blue, I went through the typical training that taught me how to use my machine guns with the X Button, how to shoot rockets with Triangle, and how to drop bombs with the Square Button, but after that, I was tossed into the unforgiving world of aerial warfare. I'd go after some Germans over Leipzig, get the crap shot out of me, and crash. Rather than replaying the missions, a screen from HQ would summarize the loss and talk about me bailing out but still advance the story. So, rather than replaying these missions until I got it right, the war went on and the fools in Washington kept assigning me new planes to wreck.
As far as the actual nuts and bolts of gameplay is concerned -- remember that this is just a preview of the game and there's still a lot of time to go -- Air Conflicts seems to be a mixed bag. I enjoy dogfighting as much as the next guy, but the reticule's pretty small in this one and it makes getting a good bead on an enemy tough. That frustration is only exacerbated by the limited number of bullets and missiles you're given. Although my favorite part of Air Conflicts is the bombing runs -- where you tap down on the D-Pad to switch to a below the belly view as you drop your payload -- you only get a couple of bombs for every mission so you end up having to use missiles or machine guns on ground-based encampments. It's fun to chase enemies, but you don't take damage for your planes colliding.
Beyond that, Air Conflicts isn't doing much for me visually. The planes look alright -- even better when they're going down in flames and leaving a billowing smoke trail -- but the ground textures are bland and blocky. The trees are sparse, and it's hard to pick out ground objectives as you come up on them. The HUD looks OK -- complete with a damage gauge, RADAR, compass, and speed tracker -- However, the biggest visual "WTF?" is the font this game uses. Before every mission you get a screen briefing you on the story and objectives, from the pause screen you can take a look at the goals, and there's the summary after the mission -- all of this is written in a font that is somewhere around the size 6 or 7 mark by my best estimates in Microsoft Word. I'm not exaggerating; this stuff is tiny, hurts my eyes, and is completely nonsensical seeing as how much text there is to read in the title.
Take this, civilians!
Air Conflicts: Aces of World War II is coming to a store near you on March 15, 2009. My time with the preview build raised a few red flags, but the fact that you can have nine pilot slots means that it'll be easy to try all of the campaigns, it supports Game Sharing, there are stats to monitor, and that dogfighting can be fun means that would-be pilots should keep an eye out for our full review in a few weeks.
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