Wings Of War

World War I, the Kaiser’s fighting airmen terrorize the skies and whispers of a Red Baron circulate like an aerial myth.  Somehow the British Air Force has managed to survive the onslaught of enemy fighters while performing a number of tasks for God and Country.  Yes, Wings of War for the Xbox puts you behind the cockpit of an Allied fighter plane as the German forces put up heavy resistance.  This is war and air combat at its most intense but does the game capture the feel while giving us a fun aerial combat game?  The answer is yes and no.

Wings of War have two main modes of playing the game, Instant Action and Campaign Mode.  Campaign has you playing as a hot shot British combat pilot named Benjamin who goes from flight school to the frontlines.  Benjamin soon finds himself going on various dangerous missions and goes up against hundreds of enemy pilots that have him in their crosshairs.  The game is separated in chapter and each chapter holds several missions--there are over seventy missions in total.  Missions vary from the simplistic--photographing enemy targets--to the more complex--taking out entire bridges so the enemy transports can’t reach their destinations.  You’ll escort allies and attempt to take an enemy prisoner by forcing him down to the ground.

Each chapter is quite lengthy; in fact, there are moments when the mission objectives just keep piling on without a sign that the chapter will come to an end soon.  Many of the missions will have you taking down enemy planes and many of them will have destroying ground targets as well (such as tanks, trucks and cannons).  You’ll even have bonus missions to complete.  Bonus missions are shown an orange icon that appears every now and then.  These missions have you racing against the clock in timed races or performing tasks such as keeping up with the squadron leader.  The game allows you to switch to a first-person view when you’re on a bombing mission or photo recon mission and this also helps spice up the game. All of these things make for a chapter that will seem endless and thus will frustrate many gamers.  Luckily for us there are checkpoints that scattered throughout the chapters. 

As far as the controls are concerned, they’re pretty basic.  Your fighter plane throttles up and down and you have both primary (machine gun) and secondary weapons (bombs and rockets).  The arcade-style allows gamers to swoop down and shoot at ground targets just as easily as air targets and even dodge the enemy’s fire.  While easy as those sounds, Wings of War’s biggest flaws come in the form of the gawky maneuverability.  Flying the era accurate fighter planes isn’t easy since games such as Crimson Skies and Secret Weapons Over Normandy allow us to use fancy maneuvers and other aerial acrobatics.  The problem is that the controls make combat slightly frustrating and when you’re attacking ground targets you’ll almost always find yourself scraping the ground.  In fact, the fighter planes move jerkily and stiffly to the point that you will be shot down rather easily during many intense air duels.

The game also includes Instant Action, which offers up a Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch game against bots.  While they bring plenty of challenges and allow you to use any plane you happen to unlock during Campaign Mode, the matches become repetitive and pretty boring.  The game could have used a multiplayer mode to spice up Instant Action and perhaps Xbox Live support could made this an even more worthwhile game.  Instant Action is all about the dogfight, though, so you won’t find plane upgrades anywhere while you fly.

Visually, the game will seem both beautiful and rather plain.  The environments look stunning as you fly over encampments and small villages . . . the details will really amaze you from afar.  Up close, though, the areas look plain and so do the combat planes.  Watching planes break apart in mid-air, though, is just about one of the best visual features.  I am somewhat puzzled by the cut scenes, though.  There are some odd cut scenes of a gunner jumping off one ally plane, somersaulting in mid-air and dramatically landing on your gunner’s seat.  Then, having helped manning the gun, the same gunner somehow jumps back up on the same plane that dropped him off.

A truly satisfying aerial combat game sounds like all hell is busting out in a hail of gunfire, explosions and plane engines that seem to roar like a giant mechanical eagle.  Wings of War have gunfire and it has explosions but they are minimal at best and, in the case of explosions, sometimes absent.  Often times you might hear your enemy’s scream as you zoom past his bullet-riddled plane and often you’ll hear the enemy plane fall apart.  The voice acting is acceptable and so is the score that could have been more dramatic throughout the game.

Rarely do console owners get a chance to jump into a satisfying World War I flight combat game so Wings of War for the Xbox could have been that satisfying rare gem of a game had it not been for its glaring weaknesses that are too hard to ignore.  The game certainly gives you quite a lot to do but sadly most of what you do becomes monotonous.  The lack of a multiplayer mode also doesn’t give much reason to continue playing.  Is it worth the bargain price, though?  Yes, but only if you already own Crimson Skies and Secret Weapons Over Normandy. 

Gameplay: 7.2
True to the aerial combat of the period, mainly due to the fact that fighter planes during World War I lacked the sleekness of fighter planes during the second world war, you’ll find maneuvering a bit on the clumsy side.  Even with the arcade-styled controls, the action will not fail to entertain as well as frustrate gamers expecting to pull of some aerial stunts during dogfights.  The missions are also quite lengthy, although thankfully there are checkpoints.

Graphics: 7.5
Gamers will, no doubt about it, both love the graphics and hate them.  While the environments are beautifully detailed the skies might fill up with dozens of enemy fighter planes; the lackluster explosion effects and the somewhat bulky looking planes will disappoint gamers.  The bizarre cut scenes of an extra gunner gracefully dropping into your plane are also unintentionally hilarious.

Sound: 6.0
Unfortunately, the sound effects aren’t as pronounced as they should be in an aerial combat game.  There are rarely sounds of explosions and you won’t even hear the sound a downed plane makes when they’re dropping to their doom.  There’s a score and it’s decent enough and the voice acting, all composed of English accents (since the game revolves around the boys of the Royal British Air Force), works well enough. 

Difficulty: Medium
The lengthy missions will have you well occupied with dozens of mission objectives including bonus missions but due to the heavy resistance you’ll often find yourself being shot down . . . repeatedly.  Yet the biggest challenge comes with maneuvering your plane when swooping down to take out ground targets.  The enemy is also quite good at destroying your landing gear, thus forcing you to either go for a crash landing or simply committing suicide.  Thankfully there are checkpoints so you don’t have to do all the missions over again.

Concept: 6.5
World War I aviation combat required fighters to make bombing runs destroy spy planes and, of course, take down the enemy opposition.  For the most part, Wings of War does a good job of representing air combat and it does an even better job of showcasing the planes that were used during that period.  The sad part is that after going on so many photo recon missions and destroying literally hundreds of observational balloons, there isn’t much here to have you continue playing the game.  Instant Action isn’t as fun as it should have been thanks in part to the fact that it does not support a multiplayer option.

Overall: 6.8
Wings of War isn’t a bad game, it just lacks the right elements that make arcade-styled flight combat games a real treat to play.  The missions are plentiful but many of them become repetitive but it’s the jerky flight controls that will frustrate gamers the most.  Try this one out as a weekend rental.