Air Conflicts: Secret Wars
Secret Wars tells the story of DeeDee Derbec, an orphan girl who was raised by one of her deceased father’s fellow pilots from WWI. She was taught to fly by her guardian and took to it like a fish to water; she feels more comfortable in the air than on the ground. Playing the role of DeeDee, and at times her father, the player becomes enmeshed in the turbulent air wars of WWII in the European and North African theatres. DeeDee’s story is told through fixed-image cut scenes voiced over with her incredibly sexy accent. Through these short scenes, we see how DeeDee becomes more and more embroiled in the violence in the skies, despite her qualms about becoming too involved with any of the battling sects. Having been tricked into committing what she considers to be murder, she shares her angst and guilt through well written and performed narration.
The missions start innocently enough with the delivery of a few cases of bootleg whiskey, but before long the difficulty and magnitude of the missions grows to the point of dropping bombs on factories, shooting down enemy airplanes, and performing stealthy delivery operations of ordnance and high value envoys. After every few missions, enough experience points are awarded to unlock a new airplane. All told, there are sixteen airplanes to be unlocked ranging from WWI biplanes like the Sopwith Camel to late WWII jet fighters like the Messerschmitt ME-262, each having its own set of strengths and weaknesses.
The flight model is tilted heavily towards the arcade side of the equation and as such will offer great accessibility to novices but will leave veterans chuckling at some of the inaccuracies. That said, the simplified flight model meshes well with the style of the game play; a low-altitude dogfight with the odds stacked heavily in favor of the dozen or so enemy planes that DeeDee has to take on single-handedly is no time to be concentrating on energy management or complex aerodynamics. This is purely a bank and yank kind of game. Even so, it would be nice if the animators had gotten a simple thing like which way the ailerons move correct.
The terrain is great to look at with plenty of sky and ground detail, yet still maintains a buttery smooth frame rate. Even my aging PC was able to handle large dogfights with a couple of dozen airplanes in close proximity without any lagging at all. There is no TrackIR support, at least in the build that I was playing, which is somewhat unfortunate. While there are plenty of visual clues to help the pilot to maintain situational awareness with whatever it is he’s trying to kill, the ability to keep an eye directly on the target would be a big help.
The missions are of just the right length to allow a few quick play sessions throughout the day. Some last longer than others, of course, but few take more than fifteen or twenty minutes to play through. There is also a multiplayer component, but there were no servers available to host a dogfight at the time of this writing. When there are more players available to connect with, the multiplayer will offer four-player dogfights, Team Dogfight, Capture-the-Flag, and Destroy & Protect modes.
Like a summer action movie, Air Conflicts: Secret Wars provides a fantastic excuse to while away a hot afternoon in the comfort of your favorite chair.
* The product in this article was sent to us by the developer/company.
About Author
I've been fascinated with video games and computers for as long as I can remember. It was always a treat to get dragged to the mall with my parents because I'd get to play for a few minutes on the Atari 2600. I partially blame Asteroids, the crack cocaine of arcade games, for my low GPA in college which eventually led me to temporarily ditch academics and join the USAF to "see the world." The rest of the blame goes to my passion for all things aviation, and the opportunity to work on work on the truly awesome SR-71 Blackbird sealed the deal.
My first computer was a TRS-80 Model 1 that I bought in 1977 when they first came out. At that time you had to order them through a Radio Shack store - Tandy didn't think they'd sell enough to justify stocking them in the retail stores. My favorite game then was the SubLogic Flight Simulator, which was the great Grandaddy of the Microsoft flight sims.
While I was in the military, I bought a Commodore 64. From there I moved on up through the PC line, always buying just enough machine to support the latest version of the flight sims. I never really paid much attention to consoles until the Dreamcast came out. I now have an Xbox for my console games, and a 1ghz Celeron with a GeForce4 for graphics. Being married and having a very expensive toy (my airplane) means I don't get to spend a lot of money on the lastest/greatest PC and console hardware.
My interests these days are primarily auto racing and flying sims on the PC. I'm too old and slow to do well at the FPS twitchers or fighting games, but I do enjoy online Rainbow 6 or the like now and then, although I had to give up Americas Army due to my complete inability to discern friend from foe. I have the Xbox mostly to play games with my daughter and for the sports games.
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