Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

Heroes Over Europe

1. Official Site
2. Platform: 360
3. Publisher: Atari
4. Developer: Transmission Games
5. Release Date: 12/31/09
6. Genre: Sim

by Tim Wilson

There was a time when arcade-style flying games were a relatively rare breed. I remember playing Red Baron on the PC back in the days when you still had to set IRQs on your sound card. It was many years later before I touched another arcade flight sim, the incredible Crimson Skies. These games offered a lot of fun for those of us who wanted to just get up in the air and shoot things, rather than memorize keyboard layouts or worry about those pesky laws of physics.

In recent years the arcade flight sim has started to make a bit of a comeback.  The original Xbox and PS2 had titles such as Secret Weapons Over Normandy and Heroes of the Pacific, while the Xbox 360 and PS3 popularized Blazing Angels and its sequel. All of these titles take place during WWII, which leads to the always interesting dilemma – when using a real-world setting, where do you draw the line between casual fun and realistic simulation?

Heroes Over Europe is a sequel to Heroes of the Pacific, and like its predecessor decides to fly squarely in the arcade camp. You need three controls. A joystick for speed, a joystick for movement, and a trigger button. If you can master those, then you’re ready to become an ace aerial combat veteran. So does Heroes Over Europe strike the sweet spot between ease of play and historical accuracy, or is this game a flaming tailspin waiting to happen?

Much like the Call of Duty series has done in the past, Heroes Over Europe allows you to play three different roles during the course of the campaign. Tom Forester is the American of the bunch, on a mission to make his fighter-ace daddy proud by killing some Nazis. You’ll start the game as Tom, who is considered a combat rookie. In the British segment of the campaign, you’ll play rough-and-tumble dock worker Danny Miller – trying to leave his working class roots behind for a shot at glory. Finally you’ll take on the role of Will West, an adventurous New Zealander who specializes in precision bombing.

Throughout the campaign’s 14 missions you’ll be doing a host of typical (and not-so-typical) aerial missions: protecting shipyards from enemy bombardment, stopping enemy convoys, aerial reconnaissance, and even blowing up underwater mines, to name a few. Unfortunately for players of other recent WWII flying titles, most of these missions will feel like a serious case of déjà vu. Yeah, I know there’s only so much you can do from the cockpit of a plane, but it would still be nice to feel like I’m not playing a game I played before. About halfway through the second or third mission, I was staring at the game box wondering if I’d already played this title – even though it just came out last month!

Fortunately there are a couple of things that are unique. First and foremost among these is the ace kill system. Keeping an enemy in your sights starts the progression of a radial bar around your crosshairs. When this bar fills up you can hit the left trigger to go into Ace Mode. Ace Mode gives you a slightly slowed down and zoomed in vantage to target your enemy’s weak spots. When the bar goes yellow (meaning a weak spot is in your sights), one burst of fire from your weapon will result in an insta-kill. This isn’t as overpowering as it sounds – ace kills are still pretty challenging to pull off in the heat of the moment.

Another nice feature is the inclusion of a red dot in front of targeted enemies to show you where you should be firing in order to “lead” your target.  As one of the game’s promotional screens proclaims, “Shoot where he’s going, not where he’s been!” While many flight-sim veterans are probably rolling their eyes right about now, for a rookie like me it was a welcome bit of information.  If nothing else, visualizing where to lead a target in this game should help me in future dogfighting endeavors in other flying games.

Of course, this brings up the question of difficulty. The fact of the matter is that while the ace kill and red dot lead system is great for relatively inexperienced dogfighters like myself, they make the game laughably easy to flight-sim veterans. Even those who have played the Blazing Angels series will likely find the game a breeze simply because they’ve done all this before. Sure, there is a hard difficulty mode, and the game does allow you switch between an Arcade flying style and a tougher “Pro” style, but players who are good enough for that would probably be better served playing a more true-to-life flight sim.

As, perhaps, an unwelcome cherry on top of the game’s rather low difficulty, the planes are extraordinarily easy to fly even for an arcade flyer. Never once did I stall, and even crashing into the ground was difficult since I seemed to be able to pull out of death dives on a dime. If this were a racing game, it would be one in which the cars have a gas pedal, automatic transmission, one brake, and no damage modeling. Great for kids and newbies; a total yawnfest for players with a bit of flying experience under their belt.

Graphically the game starts off with some promising presentation. Each mission is preceded by a WWII newsreel showing classic video footage and introducing the player to the setting of the upcoming mission. In addition, loading screens consist of various WWII-era propaganda posters. These serve to really immerse the player in the sterilized Hollywood WWII setting the developers were probably going for.

Unfortunately the gameplay graphics don’t quite pass muster. While the ground is full of objects and trees, detail is minimal. The plane models themselves suffer from jagged edges, and even worse I got some frame rate stutter in particularly busy sequences. In a game that requires pinpoint precision, that’s just a no-no. The game doesn’t look particularly bad, but it doesn’t look particularly good either. For a game this far along in the 360’s lifespan, I’d expect something a bit more impressive.

The audio department doesn’t fare much better. There must be a rule that arcade flying sims must hire the poorest voice talent available. Perhaps that’s a little unfair – I’ve certainly heard worse in other games. Still, it was disappointing to see yet another arcade sim saddled with mediocre voice talent. As much time as these pilots spend gabbing back and forth to each other, it would be great to hear some really charismatic voices rather than the generic by-the-numbers script reading we get here. Another aspect of the audio I didn’t care for were the sound effects. Shooting an enemy plane rewards you with the sound of bullets hitting metal. You can approximate the effect by dumping a bag of screws down a flight of stairs and recording it with a really bad microphone. Again I might be nitpicking, but for a sound that signifies victory over my opponent I found it extremely annoying.

The game offers a few multiplayer options if you want to play online. There are four game modes – Dogfight (free-for-all), Team Dogfight, Survivor (last man standing), and Team Survivor. While the multiplayer is of course a welcome option, there’s nothing particularly new or interesting about the game modes.

In short, Heroes Over Europe is a mediocre title which adds little to the arcade flight-sim genre. Those who haven’t played an arcade flyer before can certainly find some enjoyment here, and rookie pilots will be pleased with the game’s entry-level learning curve and difficulty. However, it’s difficult to whole-heartedly recommend a game which is so decidedly average in every way. Take it out for a weekend rental if you’re really desperate for aerial combat, but otherwise there are better games out there to spend your money on.

Gaming Trend Score

65

1. Graphics: 60
2. Audio: 65
3. Controls: 75
4. Gameplay: 65
5. Value/Replay: 60
6. OVERALL:65