Air Conflicts: Aces of World War II Review

Air Conflicts: Aces of World War II is to be released on April 27, 2009 on the PSP. It is a flight simulator/action game that focuses on World War II and the massive air conflicts that occurred throughout the conflict's 6-year history. Right from the start, you have a choice of which side you want to play as, much like in Pirates Gold! On the Sega Genesis. I was kind of surprised to see the Luftwaffe, Germany's Air Force, as a choice. This is as such as Nazis and all their relevant armed forces usually serve as the enemy solely in WWII games, the Call of Duty series for example. It is nice that fans of Air Forces are not denied this vital part of World War II history just for the sake of political correctness.

The game's story has been established as taking place during the actual years of World War II and the many battles and conflagrations within. So, let's talk about graphics. This graphics often lack clarity, which is especially problematic when you have to target objects on the ground. The radar system is helpful for targets in the air, but the precision required to not only see ground targets but to actually be able to target them is way too high. I would have preferred if the game zoomed in to the ground for bombing runs, as doing it this way would have allowed you to estimate (yes, that's how you target ground forces with bombs) when to drop the ordinance.

Besides this, the environments are kind of bland. While you have your deserts, forests, and more, they all lack detail and really do not feel all that different from each other. I never felt like I was in Africa one level or in Poland the next. Meh.

The game's music is better than expected. When playing as the Luftwaffe, I heard a lot of rousing melodies and Wagnerian inspired sounds, the composer was obviously targeting the whole "Die Walkure" genre of music. Too bad there is no music during the game's load times, I would really have liked to listen to anything during the VERY long load times between missions. And when you consider that some missions are very short, make sure you have something else to do...

The sound effects are very good as well, with the classic engine and dive-bombing sounds that we all remember from WWII movie, faithfully reproduced here. The sound of the wings, the bombs dropping, and the machine guns are all right on and serve to create an authentic experience.

The gameplay is part flight simulator with all the steering, combat maneuvering, and other aerial moves that one can expect. The game follows a mission-based structure with several different objectives from flying through checkpoints to destroying several enemy fighters. The main problem is that these goals are repeated far too often. The scenery changes and you move with your country's war machine, but the missions don't have that much variety.

Another problem for me is attacking ground units. There is a special camera designed to help you with this, but aside from using bombs, your machine guns are just not enough to do the job. This requires multiple runs even just to destroy one tank; repetition quickly rears its ugly head.

Several aircraft are also at your disposal, but large bombers don't really feel as if they have any more weight to them than small ones. Their only real difference is armaments; I favor the medium sized fighters, as they have missiles in addition to bombs and machine guns. Good for variety.

The game's challenge is all out of whack. Besides the aforementioned difficulty of ground training, even engaging ground units can be needlessly difficult due to one hit kills. If you touch the ground, you die. I suppose this is meant to be realistic, but this is a video game. Do what Starfox did, you should take damage if you bounce off the ground, not die in one hit. All this does is serve to make you exceedingly cautious, so it will be harder for the player to adjust the tighter controls required for ground targeting runs.

Challenge varies with difficulty settings. There are 4 to choose from in novice, intermediate, veteran, and ace. These difficulties actually affect the gameplay, with the enemies using better evasive tactics and more accurate aiming the higher the difficulty. I was glad to see this, as it is usually as simple as braking to get behind enemies and then shooting them without retaliation on the lower difficulties. It was nice to see a bit of the dogfighting elements advertised in the game on veteran and above.

Replay value is full of variety, in that you can play as 4 different nations; Great Britain, Germany, USSR, and the United States. Despite these choices, each nation has planes that are only aesthetically different, right down to similar armaments. Mission objectives are also the same early on.

In summation, Air Conflicts is an interesting little flight simulator/action hybrid. The graphics are kind of muddy, but the control is responsive. I enjoyed following the course of the war throughout different nations' eyes (especially as they all conveniently spoke English). I imagine that fans of World War II will enjoy this game most of all, as Conflicts did not feel like Microsoft's Flight Simulator games at all. I found myself thinking of games like Starfox more often.

-Ugly Bob

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