Air Conflicts: Secret Wars has a patently preposterous story, and it’s not a flight simulation by any stretch of the imagination. Fortunately, it still manages to be a fairly entertaining arcade flight combat shooter.
Shut up and let me shoot stuff
You are the daughter of a famous WWI flying ace who becomes mercenary pilot during WWII. Despite its arcade game roots, Air Conflicts: Secret Wars actually has a fairly intricate if overly long-winded narrative. Although I appreciate any game with a story (however ridiculous), the graphic-novel cut scenes and introductory dialogues tend to overstay their welcome. Ultimately, I just want to get in the air and blow sh*t up.
The core of the game is straightforward arcade combat using a variety of WWI and WWII aircraft. Although you begin in WWII aircraft, the game quickly finds an excuse for you to pilot WWII aircraft. (In later ‘flashback’ stories you’re given the opportunity to fly more WWI planes.) There are 16 total aircraft you can unlock as you progress through the game, each with their own characteristics that include speed, agility, firepower, and endurance.
Leave your flightstick at the door
Air Conflicts: Secret Wars is simple to control with a mouse and keyboard. You can also play with a gamepad, flightstick, or even just the keyboard. Playing with the keyboard in ‘simulation’ mode gives you a few more movement options than the mouse and keyboard, but it doesn’t make the game a flight simulation—it makes it an arcade game with slightly more complicated controls that don’t enhance the gameplay.
[Watch Air Conflicts: Secret Wars gameplay video]
Aside from speed, agility, and endurance (hitpoints), every plane has rockets, bombs, and machine guns. Some planes even have a tail gunner that is controlled by AI but gives you the option of manual control as well. This would be nice if you actually had some AI to take over piloting, but you don’t so you’re flying blind if you even bother. You also have unlimited ammo—bombs and rockets are on cool down timers, and you can overheat your machine guns after extended use—but otherwise you can spray bullets, bombs and rockets like they’re going of style.
Most missions boil down to clearing out targets—either ground targets, aerial targets, or a combination of the two. Some levels have “stealth” missions in which you must avoid enemy aircraft and land at various bases—essentially fetch missions. The game does an admirable job of mixing up the missions, but they start to feel pretty repetitive around the mid-game.
After completing some missions you gain a point to apply to your piloting characteristics. It’s a good idea but never feels like it truly impacts the game. Increasing luck, for example, supposedly increases your ability to score critical hits (essentially an instant kill shot), but it’s difficult to tell if it truly helps or not.
If you don’t want to bother playing the single player game, you can also create custom arcade matches that let you pick your plane, a map type, weather conditions, the number of enemies, and more. There’s also multiplayer via LAN or Internet—unfortunately, I didn’t have much luck finding other players at the time of this review. (Multiplayer could be a good source of re-playability however.)
A mid-level save would have been appreciated, as would the ability to further customize controls.
Overall
Air Conflict: Secret Wars reminded me a little of another indie shooter with a neat story: Naval Warfare. I don’t think Air Conflicts: Secret Wars is quite as entertaining as Naval Warfare, but it’s still good, casual faire probably best enjoyed in relatively short spurts.
I think Air Conflicts: Secret Wars could have been improved significantly if the developers had fully embraced the arcade game and introduced over-the-top power ups while perhaps focusing more on the multiplayer aspect, which has the potential to be very entertaining if the community grows larger.
As-is, at $29.99 Air Conflicts: Secret Wars is a decent arcade shooter that is as easy to play as it is to put down.
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