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Thinking back to the days of slipping quarters into behemoth arcade
games; I wonder if it was all worth it. At the peak of arcade
gaming, I easily spent hundreds of dollars. Luckily, most of the
arcade workers were my buddies and would slip me some tokens and/or
open it up and flip the toggle a few dozen times.
While most of my time was spent playing fighting games (SF, MK,
KI) or action games (Double Dragon, Final Fight); there
were a few cases where I strayed from my genre and played a bit of
the "alternative" games. One of the most notable was Top Gun. It was
a blast of a game. It started off in a full-scale model that you
could sit in, and eventually made its way to cabinet form with a
joystick. It was a great rendition to the excellent movie, and
complimented it nicely. Sure it was no Space Harrier, but it was
still fun to waste a dollar or two on it.
Prior to last week, the only thing I saw of Combat Zones were
simple screen shots. It sure looked pretty, but could the
arcade favorite take it to the next-gen level of gaming? Other Top
Gun games failed miserably, but do you think developers learned
their lessons?
Mav? Goose?
Originally developed for the PS2, Top Gun: Combat Zones was really
destined for success. Digital Integration was no noobie to the
flight simulation scene, with a long history of quality PC sims.
With that noted, I expected a solid simmy title with arcade elements
to pump up the fun-factor. Not only would Digital Integration's
integrity be proven, but also (since it was their first shot at
console development) would put their foot in the door to where
the big money is.
Making an exciting aircraft game shouldn't be too difficult. If the
stage is set right with some quality missions, intense dogfights and
a good sense of speed, the epsilon should be a positive one.
Unfortunately, none of these hit the mark.
This game was doomed from the start.
The staple of the gameplay centers on the "career mode". Once you
trudge through the training levels (and I mean TRUDGE) and
get to the meat of the briefing/mission; you'll discover it to be
uninspiring and simply underwhelming.
The briefings are a total yawn and the missions seem to be compiled
from a "choose your own adventure" book rather than an elite
group of government pilots. This leads me to my next gripe…Since I
loved the movie of Top Gun, I expected to see some kind of
reference to the 80's classic flick. After a few hours into the game
I paused it, and noticed there was literally nothing to reference
and could find no similarities to the movie. Bah! If you didn't know
that Top Gun was the "best of the best school", you would have no
clue what was going on.
Even with boring missions, history has proven that a game can easily
be resurrected if the gameplay is top-notch. Sadly, the gameplay is
about as fun as playing Connect Four in the dark. The controls are
overly simplistic. The overall physics were fairly decent, but it
still was just way too easy. After reading the manual (RTFM!)
I discovered that you can change the controls to an "advance control
set". A-hah! That must be the key to Pandora’s Box! Improvement?
Yes. Good? No. Using the advance controls allows you to use both
analog controllers to take charge of your aircraft. Even with the
"advance" controls, it still wasn't enough to salvage the control
aspects of the game.
To put some salt in the gameplay wound, the map radar is about as
helpful as a fish stick in the eye. Various blips and colors dot
your screen, but where is the enemy really? Above? Below? This truly
makes for an enigmatic dogfight scenario, where you guess your
enemies’ location but end up dive bombing when you should have been
heading for the clouds. At this point I realized that this was not
“purchase worthy” for anyone. I assumed, however, that a rental
might be good for a two-nighter. I assumed that a split screen
dogfight with a buddy would be fairly enjoyable, so the multiplayer
would make it a decent rental. The true nail in the coffin is that
there is absolutely no multiplayer aspects. How can a game in
2003 be viable without a multiplayer function? Cripes.
”This can’t be happening” –
Eternal Darkness
Talk about bait and switch… As mentioned, I saw the screen shots and
the ads made the game look brilliant. The textures where clean, and
the environments panned with gorgeous scenery. What happened? Still
shots are one thing, but once into the game you will have to check
to make sure you aren’t playing your N64. The planes looked good at
times, but the rest of the world is blurry, dull and the performance
was pitiful. Even things like rocket trails were done poorly. While
the contrasts of colors were nice, everything else fell by the
wayside and is not a testament of next-generation graphics.
The audio is all but laughable. If you remember the movie, the
soundtrack was one of the best ever in movie history. This again
shows the sad marketing plot by stamping the “Top Gun” on a game and
making people think it is a rendition of a classic. Instead of
getting the good tunes, we are tossed the scraps of the table with
cheesy techno and weak guitar rifts. Not only is the soundtrack
worthless, the sound effects were miserable. It sounded more like I
was in a Kia, not an F-14 fighter jet. Wimpy sounds, with
unrealistic sound effects simply kept pace with the barely mediocre
gameplay of Combat Zones.
66 Says:
If Top Gun: Combat Zones was renamed: F-14 Battle or When
Planes Attack it might not have been quite as bad. But, when you
try to market something using the name of something else simply for
the purpose of selling; netjak will pigeon-hole you so fast that it
will make yer head spin. I wanted to play a Top Gun game, but
instead I got a bland air combat game that focused more on the Top
Gun logo than any form of a decent game. It’s obvious that
the game is garbage, but what makes it worse is the blatant descent
from the developers. Everything from the “sweet still shots” to the
marketing of how great the “low level combat” was is all a complete
lie and Digital Impressions should be ashamed for using cheap
tactics merely to sell a few copies of their game. I don’t recommend
this for a purchase or a rental. Good luck Digital Impressions, you
have your work cut out for you to make it on the console front…
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