So I picked this up for cheap as part of my Great Xbox Budget Journey. I'd heard about the PC and Xbox versions before, but never really had a good idea of what they were, outside of post-WWI prop-plane action games with upgradeable planes and some freedom in how you go about things. So naturally, my imagination and tendency toward ridiculous expectations being what they are, I imagined having Privateer-style free run of a wide area of dystopian-past North America, being able to upgrade my plane's engine or guns or body the way I want, and getting into furballs with realistic flight controls.
Now that I'm finally playing the game...
Hub cities - which you're anchored to - with a smattering of GTA-style missions?
Planes with mounted shotguns? Including chook-chook reloading noises?
Repair powerups?
Homing missiles?
All-at-once, arbitrary plane upgrades that require me to collect X number of shines bananas pilot-wing widgets?
Not even an option to use semi-realistic flight controls?
Jeez, people, you're killing me. You can make a game accessible without making it st00pid. It's like some kind of horrible collision between somebody's decision to make a cinematic flight-arcade game, a 3D platformer, and a committee mandate to ape GTA's game design.
Perversely, the dogfights are kinda fun. I'm getting TIE Fighter vibes from shooting down planes and blowing up the gun turrets on big zeppelins. And the cool, film-scorey soundtrack is making me think of Indiana Jones. But the rest of the game is about to make my brain take a vacation. When does the Michael Bay movie adaptation come out?
