Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Keith Schleicher

After Burner was one of the first arcade flight sims.  Since the game was an arcade game, the controls were rather simple.  Yet, being able to fire rockets at enemy jets or trying to bring them down with your guns felt very satisfying.  Shaking a jet on your tail attempting to get a lock was an intense experience.  Since then other games have tried to give a fun arcade flight experience.  That’s the feeling you get with Over G Fighters.

In Over G Fighters, a one-world government is close to becoming a reality.  Militant groups opposing the formation of the one-world government started to rise up.  To stop the swell of the rebellion, a new fighter squadron was created, the Energy Air Force.  You fly as one of the members of the Energy Air Force, sent to prevent the uprising of military factions.

The jets in Over G Fighters have the most impressive graphics in the game.  Over G Fighters sports over thirty different jets for you to fly, and each one looks absolutely gorgeous.  Each of them is modeled realistically with accurate weapon points.  You can see the weapons mounted to the plane.  Photos of the plane you are using are shown between the mission screen and the start of the mission.  It’s really interesting information.  It’s too bad that the information is hard to read because of the font and how small the text is.

The textures of the ground look great…when viewed from a distance.  When you get close to the ground, the textures are incredibly blurry and remind me of Strike Commander.  Crashing on the ground causes you to wonder what was in the spot that you crashed in.

The cockpit views are nice, and they are realistically modeled after the jets you fly.  You don’t have to stick in the cockpit though, as you can choose a camera behind your plane.  The rockets leave a trail of smoke heading towards their target.  The flames flicker from the plane, but the explosions don’t look as realistic as they probably should.

As you fly around, if you make steep turns and get positive G’s the screen starts to get darker, simulating you blacking out.  As you regain consciousness the screen lightens.  If you pull negative G’s, then the screen turns red as blood rushes to your brain.

The music is rather…odd.  The best way to describe it is a cross between J-pop and metal.  If you think that’s a weird combination that couldn’t be done before, then you should hear the music.  The music does have a hard driving beat to it, but the biggest problem is that it not only doesn’t sound very good, but it’s repetitive.

There are five different pilots that can serve as your wingman, as well as a commander that briefs you.  By the way they talk, you feel as if they’d be more excited by watching paint dry.  The voices are monotone with very little excitement.  While it’s nice to get actual mission briefings that are voiced over, the voice of the commander is laughable.  Your wingmen are just as bad, as they proclaim that they’ve been hit, but they don’t have a sense of urgency to their voices.

There are a few sound effects that bring the game to life.  Rockets whoosh when they are fired from your jet.  You hear the engines whistle as you increase them to take off.  Hit the afterburners and you get a sonic boom behind you.  The computer yells at you to pull up when you heading towards the ground too fast.  While there aren’t a huge number of sound effects, the ones that are present sound realistic.

Controlling a flight sim using a console controller is a unique experience, especially when you have PC games that require the full use of the keyboard.  Over G Fighters does a nice job to let you control all aspects of the plane on the Xbox 360.

The left analog stick controls pitch and yaw, the bumpers increase and decrease your thrust, and the triggers control the rudder.  Using the D-pad, up toggles the airbrakes, down toggles the landing gear, left performs a special function depending on the plane you are using, and right changes your current target.  The right analog stick looks around in the cockpit, while clicking on the right analog stick changes your camera.  Y changes your weapons, X switches to guns, B releases chaff or flares, and A fires your main weapons.

There are two modes for the controls, Realistic and Arcade.  The game comes set to Arcade, but the jets don’t control very well with it.  In fact, this mode is useless to control your jet with any degree of mobility.  Don’t even bother trying to play using the Arcade mode.

While playing the game with the Realistic mode, the game feels very sluggish.  While you need to slow down to get in a quick turn, it still feels like it takes too long to get your plane facing the direction you want to.

The Scenario Mode is where you find most of the action in the game.  You are presented with a map and you select your mission depending on what is available on the screen.  Then a briefing is given, you select your jet, then your wingman, and then your armament.  Once you’ve completed that process you get a final screen showing your loadout and wingman.  You can either make changes or go forward with the mission at this point.

When you first start out, only a couple of planes are available for you to fly.  As you progress, more planes are available for you to choose from.  Eventually you can get more than 30 planes to choose from.  The game also lets you know if a specific plane is bad for the mission you are on.

Five different wingmen are available for you to select from for your missions.  You can choose from an Englishman, a Russian, and three Americans.  Each has their own specialty.  While it’s a nice option, it doesn’t feel like your choice of wingmen makes a difference for success or failure for the mission.  Your wingmen are also pretty useless for missions.  They never seem to help you take down aircraft or hit ground targets.  Their chatter isn’t all that useful either.  They call out that they’ve been hit, but they will still go about flying for the mission.

When you start the mission, most of the time you will actually be in flight.  Some missions do require a takeoff, but most don’t.  You head to your objective and kill the enemy forces.  Most of the time these missions are straight forward and don’t take too long to complete.  Enemies appear in the same place every time, so once you’ve restarted the mission a few times you have a pretty good idea what your strategy is to complete the mission.  Most of the missions require taking out other aircraft, but sometimes there are a few ground targets to take out.  You also don’t have to worry about landing.  Once you are finished with the mission you can hit start and the mission finishes.

Over G Fighters features some of the fastest aircraft ever made.  However, you don’t get any real sense of speed with the game.  You do hear a sonic boom after hitting the afterburners, but you don’t feel like you are going all that much faster than without the afterburners.

The enemies in the game do seem to have some strategy to them.  While you can fly straight towards them, they try to fly past you and circle around to get a lock on you.  Using the flares is required to draw missiles off of your tail.  Seeing the HUD turn orange should cause a bit of panic.

When you are finished with a mission, you are given the option to “End Game,” “Retry,” or “Save Replay.”  The odd thing is that “End Game” doesn’t really end the game, it just ends the current mission you are on.  It was a little confusing when I first saw that option.

The missions within a specific area in scenario mode look like they should take place in the same area, but none of the missions feel like they are related.  Instead they feel like single missions with a story loosely tied-in.  The mission you select does have an effect on the missions that are available in the area later.  This gives you some incentive to play the game more than once to try different mission branches.

The missions start out simple.  At first, all you basically have to do is lock onto the target and fire your missiles.  A couple of minutes and you are done.  Later the missions do get a bit more challenging, and different objectives come up, but the missions never feel that different from the original missions.  It feels boring as you trudge through every mission.

The scenario mode contains over 75 single-player missions, which is a large number of missions.  You won’t be able to get through all the missions on the first play through because the missions branch differently depending on the mission you select to complete.

The Challenge Mode gives you two different options.  In Arean, you fly with two wingmen to take down as many enemies as possible.  You refuel when needed, and your stats are saved when you are either shot down or return to base successfully.  In Strike mode you can set up any kind of scenario you want to, from your plane and wingman to the number of enemies and where they are located.

There isn’t any local multi-player, but you can play with others over Xbox Live.  In Arena mode you attack the opponent’s base while trying to protect your own base.  In Versus mode two teams go after each other, with the last team standing winning.  Up to eight players can play online.  A few different modes and the ability for bigger teams would make multiplayer a much better experience.

Often a fighter like this will make you feel like Maverick and hum “Highway to the Danger Zone.”  Unfortunately, Over G Fighters doesn’t have the sense of speed, graphics, action, or mission structure to make you feel like you are flying the unfriendly skies.  It’s difficult to find a good jet fighter on the consoles.  Some might say that about the only good flight game you can find these days is Crimson Skies for the original Xbox.  The genre needs a good flight game, and Taito really missed a great opportunity with Over G Fighters.

Gaming Trend Score

57

1. Graphics: 48
2. Audio: 64
3. Controls: 67
4. Gameplay: 50
5. Value/Replay: 65
6. OVERALL:57