Air Conflicts: Aces of World War II
Verdict: If not for the load times . . .
In a Nutshell: This is a dogfighter with campaigns that take you through the time-line of WWII.
“Air Conflicts is an arcade flight simulator game set in World War II, featuring the aircraft of this period and historically inspired missions. The emphasis is on intense dogfights, daring bombing raids and exciting aerial missions.”
- Fun Rating: Sorta Fun
- ESRB: T
- Players/Mode: single-player / campaign, up to 8 / pvp
- Game Duration: 10-15 hours. Each campaign takes about an hour. There are four countries to play, each with three campaigns.
- System: PSP
- Developer: Graffiti Entertainment
- Website: http://www.graffitientertainment.com/index.php/games/air-conflicts
- Cost: $27.99 from Amazon
| Would I play this again? | at least to try out the multiplayer |
| Would I recommend this game? | maybe |
| Was the story good? | if you like reading about WWII |
| Was the music good? | it was ok |
| Were the graphics good? | ok |
| Was this game difficult? | not really |
| Was this game frustrating? | yes |
| Was this game offensive? | no |
| Was this game worth your time/money? | some of it |
Playing the game
First thing you’ll need to do is choose a name for your pilot and which Air Force you’ll be flying for; England, Germany, Russia, or USA. After a couple of training exercises you’ll have the option of picking a mission that is available for a limited time. Missions range from patrolling, dogfighting, bombing runs, or some mix of the three.
Once you’ve made your selection you’ll either find yourself already flying or sitting on a runway waiting to take off. If on the runway, use either the Select key to automatically take off or the Right button to manually take off (which isn’t much different). If you start on the runway and run out of ammunition, you can attempt to land and reload. You’ll need a steady approach, gradually slowing down your plane without turning your engines off, decrease your altitude without crashing, and ues the Circle button to lower the landing gear. Once you’re low enough and slow enough with the landing gear down, the game takes over the landing and reloading. Take off again using the Right button.
Airplane directional control is through the analgo stick and the Right and Left keys will speed you up or slow you down, respectively. The D-pad controls camera view; down toggles on/off bombing targeting camera, all others are hold-to-view.To attack, the X button fires the machine gun, Square drops bombs, and Triangle fires missles.
What the game gets right
The camera views and controls were really well done and made for an enjoyable flying experience. The targeting sight on the bombing camera took a lot of the guess work out of attacking ground units. And, the amount of detail put into the visuals sucked me in to the game’s world.
What the game gets wrong
The text is painfully tiny and makes me wonder if the developers only played it with the PSP plugged into a larger display. In addition, there’s not much contrast between the terrain and the ground targets which makes sense in a challenging aspect, not so much with a glossy display that won’t always be used in a optimally lit environment.
In order to reload your amo you have to land but, there’s no landing practice or “auto landing” (why only automate the takeoff, a.ka. “the easy part”?). Using the missles, especially on airborne units, is next to impossible as there is no crosshair or other aiming mechanism for them. And with no ability to repeat a level without going through the entire campaign again, the difficulty level skewed towards difficult.
The main detriment to this game, however, is the long load times (sometimes the load times are longer than it takes to play through a level). A campaign probably takes twice as long as what it should, all from waiting for the level to load up . And a load time to go back to the menu? As this is my first experience with a PSP I’m not sure if it’s the game or the system, though. Either way it’s hard to stay interested in playing.
Sum it up
This game has quite the learning curve and took me several attempts to finally get a couple of missles to hit airborne targets and even then it was a rare experience. I was a little odd that some of the moves you would expect to see (loops and rolls) weren’t available but didn’t detract from the experience.
As the game tries to stick with history, some levels are impossible to succeed at other than to save your plane. Other levels have a result of failure even though you’ve cleared the map. It’s a game, right? Where’s the fun of having to run away or your military being defeated just because that’s what happened in reality?
All that aside, I would love to try this against other players so I’ll pack it along with me to PAX this year in hopes of finding out what that aspect of the game is like.
Other games you might like to read about:
Attack on Pearl Harbor
Space War CommanderRate this Game
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 4)
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