These Birds Feathers Have Rusted

I traded in another four XBox 360 games around the 4th. I didn't see myself playing Eternal Sonata or Halo 4 again, and Left 4 Dead was getting old. I can see the appeal if you play with friends, but solo wasn't nearly as fun. I got the feeling the computer-controlled characters were using me as bait for the zombies, since they always let me go first. Eh, shooters are touch-and-go with me, that's old news. Something else that's old news is that I like flight combat games, even if they frequently let me down.

Which is how we get to Birds of Steel, which was the fourth game. It had one thing going for it right from the start: That I wouldn't have to give my wingmen commands, then watch them fail to carry them out. Instead, the wingmen operate more as extra lives. If I get shot down in one plane, I can switch to any of the remaining wingmen, assuming there are any. Well, that was encouraging, and the fact you can switch around even without dying was nice. Sometimes I get tired of chasing the same plane forever, so try a different plane and see if I can make it work.

So as long as the wingmen aren't dying quickly, they're not hampering me - except when one of them crashes into me, which is possibly a realistic simulation of the chaos of air combat, but that's precious little comfort when I lose three of my four lives in one moment - but they aren't a huge help. What I found was if we were fighting an enemy of roughly equal numbers, I have to shoot down enough of the enemy to where my forces have roughly half-again as many (so from 15 vs. 15 to 15 vs. 10) before the other planes are good for anything besides giving the opponents something to shoot at besides me.

The game does allow for a bit of customization even in the historical campaign. There are three levels of controls - simplified, realistic, and simulator. I'm not clear on why simulator would be a higher difficulty than realistic, but I never tried it. I found the risk of blacking out in realistic a problem I didn't want to deal with, so I stuck with simplified. The controls themselves are pretty smooth, though some planes were considerably less responsive than I expected (the Zero fighter being the prime example). The other bit of customization related to fuel and ammunition. You can choose to have unlimited quantities, or to have either one or both limited, though I never did receive any warnings about running low on fuel. Also, the game's definition of "unlimited" or "limited" ammo are a bit curious. Even with unlimited ammo, you can still run out, at which point you have to wait some predetermined amount of time before your ammo is magically replenished. This can run anywhere from 20 to 60 seconds, so you're better off just hopping to a different plane, if you can. Likewise, on limited ammo, your stores will still replenish themselves. Sometimes. And sometimes they won't. I wasn't able to discern a pattern to it.

If you want to create your own missions, I think there are a lot more options, in terms of what your objective will be (bombing mission, defend bombers, ground attack, air patrol, etc.) and what you'll face. I tended to ignore that in favor of of the Dynamic Campaign, which allows you to play certain battles and try to determine the outcome. That's overselling it some. Say you select the Battle of Malta. The island will be split into sectors, and you can play as either side, and you can determine how many sectors you start with. Then you select a mission, and if you succeed, you capture a sector. If you fail, you lose one, and this continues until one side captures all sectors. What missions are available vary depending on circumstance. You won't have the option to attack shipping if you aren't attacking a water sector, for example. The problem being, it doesn't really make me feel like I'm part of a larger campaign. I go for air-to-air combat, and me and my 15 buddies beat the 15 fighter planes on the other side. I can sort of visualize how that helps us capture that sector (if I take it to mean we establish air superiority), but I don't feel like I'm accomplishing that much.

Another irritating aspect, is the hanger. If you play historical campaign, you can use whatever plane they say you're supposed to have, out of the 100+ they have in the game. In Dynamic Campaign, though, you're limited to planes you've unlocked. You unlock planes firstly, by completing missions, which earn you experience so you level up. You can't use a particular plane until you reach a certain level (or rank). Then you have to earn enough points to purchase the plane, which is why I was playing Dynamic Campaign, because completing missions there was the fastest way available to earn those points. Except you win two Dynamic Campaigns, you have maybe enough to buy 3 planes, 4 if you're lucky. I still had about 80 to go when I gave up the ghost, because it wasn't worth it. I was tired of having to fly the damn Brewster Buffalo all the time, so that maybe I could earn enough points to get the Wildcat.

Plain and simple, it started to feel like punishment to play, because I was slogging through the same missions to earn enough points to buy better planes - which I would have then used in those same missions. Also - and maybe this was my old, non-HD TV - but it was really hard to distinguish targets on the screen. Especially ground targets. On the positive side, torpedo bombing was oddly satisfying, and I felt good any time I managed to land successfully on a carrier. The game captured the speed of the planes, but not the maneuverability. Overall, not remotely worth it. Another console, another disappointing World War 2 flight combat game.