|
Thursday 6 March, 2008
GAMEPLAY
I found out I can Upgrade my ships with money and special points received from missions and from objects hidden all over the environment. This is always a good thing to put in a game. It gave me choices; I could upgrade my favorite plane. Its nice to be able to improve my planes fighting capabilities.
Many of the missions give the option of using a turret to take out enemies. This is cool because if I got bored with the dog-fighting or my plane had low health, I could land at a nearby turret on the ground of on the blimp, and keep fighting. The turrets have different weapons, making the shooting less monotonous as it sometimes did.
The battles with enemies weren’t very different. I would follow a guy, shoot him down, then repeat. There wasn’t much strategy either, just dodge when being shot at and get close behind enemies and shoot until they blew up. Maybe since the game is so easy, it doesn’t force me to come up with better battle tactics.
The race missions were a change of pace and a chance to earn extra money. They weren’t hard but I could try to beat my own time so there was a reason to play tracks again. With future upgrades or a new plane I could get a better time, so that gives me a reason to come back eventually.
DESIGN
The level design was smart. The worlds are open and give the player the feeling of freedom. To encourage exploration, the designers added hidden rewards all over the levels. The player also has the freedom to start the story missions whenever they want , or do side quests. This lets the player move through the story at their own pace.
The designers added lots of stuff to increase total game play time. The hidden objects require the player to search the entire level for them if they want to get more points for upgrading planes. The optional races have a best time record that players can try to beat. The planes ability to upgrade will keep the player occupied, even after they have finished the game’s story missions. The multiplayer adds a huge amount of game time.
The game has added humor and lessened the violence so it could reach a broader audience. There isn’t the feeling of bloodlust that a pirate would normally convey. In fact, Nathan seems like a kind and easy going guy. This lightens the mood of the game, which could just as easily be dramatic and serious. When a plane is destroyed, the pilot doesn’t die, he just ejects out with a parachute, so the player doesn’t have to feel guilty about killing anybody. In reality, ejecting to safety probably wouldn’t happen very much and the goal of both pilots is usually to kill the other, not just incapacitate them.
|
