
	Platform PC Genre Action Publisher Destineer Developer Big John Games ESRB E (Everyone) Released March 28, 2008

- Highly detailed aircraft models

- Schizophrenic flight modeling - Aggravating gameplay - Highly questionable implementation of DS capabilities all around

Review: Geometry Wars Galaxies (DS) Review: Nanostray (DS) Review: Ridge Racer DS (DS)
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Spitfire Heroes: Tales Of The Royal Air Force

Score: 3.0 / 10

The British Royal Air Force, even today, holds a certain pre-eminence among other nations with standing fleets of military aircraft. Yes, the U.S. Air Force regularly supplies astronauts for the space program and the Russian Air Force can do some astounding stunts with Su-27 fighter planes. But the RAF holds the distinction of having fought and won the Battle of Britain over the skies of England during WWII, no mean feat by any stretch of the imagination. In Spitfire Heroes: Tales of The Royal Air Force, you notionally get to climb into the cockpit and relive some of the best and most hair raising moments of the RAF during that time period. Unfortunately, this one stalls out badly.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I'm exceedingly disappointed in the graphics for this game. While the DS has limitations, it can display better graphics than this.

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The models are well detailed, which is definitely a point in the game's favor, but the terrain textures look like something out of a flight sim from back in the early 90's. Moreover, the DS's small screen makes it very difficult to identify targets at long ranges, and all the detail in the world on the various aircraft in this game means nothing if you rarely get more than a

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few seconds to appreciate it.

The game's audio is serviceable but not outstanding. There's not a whole lot of differentiation in sounds between planes, nor between weapons being fired or bombs being dropped. What few bits of music exist are reserved strictly for the opening movie, the menu, the gallery of aircraft, and the small cutscenes that preface each mission. What's particularly damning about Spitfire Heroes in the audio department is what isn't there. There's no music, not even a static score, during the missions. There's no voice over work of any kind, no gruff British officer giving you your briefing, no transmissions from base to help give you an idea of your progress, no taunts from Nazi pilots who want to talk trash before blowing you away, nothing. It makes the whole thing seem dull and lifeless.

By far, the worst sins committed by Spitfire Heroes fall in the gameplay department. The engine can't seem to make up it's mind about being a serious flight sim engine or a more arcade like shooter. What kind of half-assed simulation goes to the trouble of modeling an aircraft's turning radius and how it can be reduced by pulling back on the throttle but can't be bothered to let you bust out moves like an Immellman or a split-S? The only trick you can do is a roll, and that's of such dubious value, I have to wonder why the developers put it in when they gave us such a gimpy flight model to begin with. There's no campaign per se. It's a string of missions that follow the rough chronology of Britain 's entry into WWII. The only way to get to the next mission is to unlock it by completing the previous mission. However, even on the easy setting, the challenge makes completing your mission aggravating. Again the game displays its own little brand of schizophrenia by putting you up solo against hordes of German fighters and bombers. No wingmen. No assistance. Nothing. That sort of scenario works great on a shooter, which is supposed to have an exaggerated sense of scale, but not for something pretending to be a semi-serious flight sim.

The controls on the D-pad are easy enough to learn if you've played enough flight sims but they're sluggish. I felt like I was driving a bus instead of a nimble fighter plane. Compounding the sluggish controls are the fact that your enemies don't seem to be bound by the same rules of physics you do, and dogfights are very often the sort of whirling turn in a single direction that you find in early space sims like X-Wing and Wing Commander. Grinding out the missions takes tremendous patience, a willingness to beat your head against the same wall over and over again, and a considerable amount of self-restraint to keep yourself from throwing the DS against the wall in frustration. Adding to this is the way that the gauges are laid out, another display of schizophrenia. The gauges are on the bottom screen (usually the touch surface) while the top screen displays the action. Moreover, the gauges attempt to be authentic, which for this particular platform is completely the wrong way to go. You have a two and a half inch screen with which to display vital information and the developer chose to go with altimeter and airspeed indicators which don't have any numbers on them, only a vague approximation based on a needle. For accurate digital measurements, I'd have been more than willing to accept the anachronism for the sake of functionality. I cannot personally speak to how enjoyable or not the game's multiplayer is, but the noticeable lack of available players through Nintendo game matching service speaks volumes.

The developers might have had their hearts in the right place, but the DS platform is just not the right way to go for what they might have been trying to accomplish. Spitfire Heroes buys the farm on this sortie.

- Axel Cushing

(June 2, 2008)