HIGH Setting out into the galaxy for the first time.

LOW Things get real repetitive, real quick.

WTF Where's the drama?

In Mike Suskie's main review of Rebel Galaxy, he concludes that the game isn't deep or diverse enough, and after putting in time for this second opinion, I agree. While there were a few moments when I could see the promise in Double Damage's work, crossing the stars quickly goes from being wondrous to being a chore.

After reading the bit of dry text that passes for a beginning, it becomes apparent that there are a lot of systems going on in Rebel Galaxy. The game stumbles almost immediately by failing to include decent tutorials for them, and also by not doing enough outside those systems to get the player enmeshed in the universe.

While the developers toss out cursory explanations for some things, most of what's in Rebel Galaxy is there for the player to discover on their own. Such an approach is fine in certain situations, but too much of the basics are left unexplained. For example, it took a while before I had a grasp on how shielding and armor on ships worked. In another situation I was sent to retrieve some minerals from an asteroid belt, but I had no idea how to mine them when I got there.

The naval-style broadside battling is fine enough, but I felt like it was hard to get a feel for what was going on moment-to-moment. Sometimes I felt like my ship was invulnerable, and at others I was dead before I realized what happened. Part of this problem is due to the game noticeably jumping up in difficulty to prevent the player from blowing through the campaign, and it was tough to get a sense of how my ship stacked up to others. This situation is made murkier because there are dozens of parts and things to equip on a ship, but while some numbers clearly get higher, it's hard to tell what to put resources into first.  

Speaking of which, it feels like too much of Rebel Galaxy is about numbers. There are lots of menus, lots of ship components, lots of statistics to look at, but none of those mean a lot when the experience is so flat. The game is just flying from point to point, collecting something, delivering something or answering distress beacons while ship combat breaks out constantly.

At first glance it seems like there's a ton of content here, but it's busywork that exists for the sake of being done. The story couldn't be less interesting, the NPCs are forgettable placeholders, the various "factions" don't have any presence, buying items on one side of a system and hauling it to the other holds no thrill, rescuing ships in need awards a bit of cash but never leads to anything more… it's all just chaff that fails to capture the adventure I'd want from a spacefaring game like this one.

On top of everything else, Mike was right on the mark when he said warping from place to place is boring downtime—due to the distance between points, players are frequently presented with dull periods of waiting as the ship travels. I'd often play some Marvel Puzzle Quest or hit Twitter while waiting for my craft to get where it was going, and when I play a game, I want to be engaged. If I want to mentally check out, I'll turn the console off and do something else.  

While Rebel Galaxy is heading in the right direction, it's a long, long way from where it needs to be. With a better story and characters, more intuitive systems, a smaller scale and a host of other tweaks, it could be a real star. At the moment, it's more like a dull job shuffling spreadsheets than the privateering adventure it seems. Rating: 5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

HIGH A graphical stunner full of eye candy and fan service.

LOW The lack of depth and small selection of environments.

WTF Apparently, the job requirements for Han Solo's voice actor were "Male. Preferably conscious."

Fans have waited a long time for this one, and I'm happy to report that for the most part, they're rewarded with a game worthy of the wait. Star Wars: Battlefront is a winner and it's money well-spent for even casual Star Wars fans. But before running out and dropping the cash, experienced shooter fans should read the rest of the review—most of my complaints about the game will be relevant to them.

But we'll get to that—let's start with the positives.

Graphically, Star Wars: Battlefront is stunning to look at. Locations are exactly as fans like myself imagined them from the movies, with levels of polish and detail that make even the most visually charged titles seem pedestrian. The thick forests of Endor are captured with loving accuracy, full of lush greenery, hollowed logs, and convenient tree perches. The dusty, wind-blown browns of Tatooine and desolate ice spans of Hoth are brought to life in striking detail as well, with just enough shifts in scenery and terrain to make these maps effective playgrounds.

Just as impressive are the player models and outfit options, which are also true to the source material. When players get up close and personal with a Stormtrooper, they can expect to see reflections in the Imperial visors … at least until that Stormtrooper becomes aware of their presence and fires off those iconic "pew pew" laser blasts into their gray matter. 

This authenticity continues when players get the chance to shed their anonymity and become named characters, either through Hero cards or during the Heroes vs. Villains mode. In these occasions, gamers finally get the chance to show off Jedi acrobatics or Fett-styled "death from above" blasts. It's enjoyable fan-service moments like these that offer a unique value that can't be matched by any other shooter out there.

On the other hand, I'm guessing that EA's budget was blown on visuals, because the rest doesn't stack up.

The voice acting in Star Wars: Battlefront is grating at best and painful at worst. Few voices hit the mark, and a handful are so bad, they removed me from the moment entirely. I actually checked the credits to see if the actor who voiced Han Solo was "Morty the Sausage Guy from Wrigley Field." It wasn't, but the beer-stained memories remain.

Mechanically, Battlefront is a smooth, tight multiplayer shooter that manages to be accessible to online newcomers while also offering some interesting play modes—and they need to be interesting, because unlike previous incarnations of the SW:BF series, there is no campaign mode and very little to do for solo gamers.

Basically, lone wolfers can tackle short missions against AI-controlled enemies, with the mode mostly serving as a tutorial for the shooting mechanics and obtaining power-ups. The other single-player offerings, like a generic Horde-type challenge or a bot-driven deathmatch, aren't exciting enough to hold a person's attention unless their Internet connections are down.

While solo players don't get much, online is where this game lives. When Battlefront is at its best, such as in the 40-player, land and air Supremacy mode, it's sheer joy to any fan of the IP. The mode centers on controlling a series of points on the map. It's focused enough to keep teams on task, while open-ended enough to allow newer players to contribute along the way.

Likewise, the Droid Run (escort) and Blast (team deathmatch) modes work well, especially with smaller, more unified teams that allow players to bask in the surroundings while still staying competitive.

Unfortunately, Battlefront tends to get a bit too chaotic for its own good during more elaborate modes, like Walker Assault—a mode seemingly designed for Twitch uploads. Though I've heard countless reports of this being Battlefront's source of memorable moments, I found my three-plus hours in it to be a discordant mess full of air-to-ground deaths, odd glitches, and some of the most camper-friendly respawn sites in recent memory.

By the time a team successfully downs an AT-AT (something that hasn't been done smoothly since the Atari 2600) players will likely miss the setpiece payoff due to respawning or trying to avoid being sniped from above. Is the chaos true to the Star Wars universe? Absolutely. But as massive as it is, I doubt many will play through after the initial "wow" factor fades.

Despite the chaotic missions and sparse single-player content, the biggest complaint I have is, unfortunately, a big one. Star Wars: Battlefront is simply too shallow in its current incarnation. Sure, the game is primed for a ton of DLC additions (several free add-ons have been announced in addition to a paid season pass) but is it too much to ask that a game be more complete at launch?

With just a handful of locales and a few extra maps within each type of environment, Battlefront isn't going to make anyone forget the other big-name shooters out there. The areas are beautiful and provide entertainment for a few hours, but if this game is going to have any real legs, the upcoming additions had better deliver some substantial variety and depth.  Similarly, the weapon upgrades and loadouts are extremely limited, and the ‘Card' system was done much better in Titanfall, another EA game that seems like it came out a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

In my view, it seems that EA set out to bring Star Wars to as wide an audience as possible, trying to satisfy both shooter newcomers and twitch-pro frag artists, and everyone in between. The problem is that while Battlefront delivers a rich Star Wars experience, the play is far too limited for shooter veterans, and too intimidating for multiplayer Padawans.

Of course, for the huge fan base that falls between those two extremes, Star Wars: Battlefront is going to be a massive hit, and with good reason. The game is gorgeous, authentic, highly detailed, and rife with potential to grow into something much bigger. And, with The Force Awakens coming to theaters any minute now, there's no better time for gamers to reacquaint themselves with the ways of the Force this holiday season. Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was obtained via purchase and reviewed on the Xbox One. 

Approximately 5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. 20 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T. While the game is centered on shooting and violent action, the fantasy nature of the characters, and the complete lack of blood and gore keeps this on the right side of parental concerns. Compared to what's out there, Battlefront is less aggressive than a chapped lip.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: The game's music, effects and environmental sounds add A LOT to the overall experience. However, there are subtitles, and the game is fully playable for those who are deaf or hard of hearing.

I just got code for a game called Kromaia Omega (PS4) and it's worth a look for fans who like 3D space shooters… Not that there's a whole lot of those on console. This one actually reminds me a bit of Descent, from way back in 1995.

The premise is that the player starts out in an odd-looking spaceship, and there's basically no other information other than someone or something wants revenge.

Once things get rolling, the ship is free to fly around 3D space and shoot things, with the end goal of defeating four bosses. Here's a video of me taking down the first boss. I like the feeling of total freedom in space, and the ship is pretty responsive.

On the other hand, it's really abstract in terms of its graphics, and quite disorienting. You might even say that it's visually overwhelming — there can be a lot of stuff on the screen at once, and I found it pretty hard to parse.

If you're in the market for an eye-melting abstract 3D space shooter… Well, here you go.

It's available on PS4 right now.

HIGH Purchasing a dreadnaught.

LOW Escorting a friendly flying through clear airspace in a zigzag for no reason.

WTF Getting stuck when moving on a third axis would've gotten me out.

Rebel Galaxy is not a space sim.

I say this for the game's benefit, because anyone expecting it to supplant Elite Dangerous is going in with the wrong expectations. In fact, actually exploring is the least rewarding part of the whole experience.

There are 14 solar systems to traverse in Rebel Galaxy, and they have virtually no distinguishable attributes between them; they could be randomly generated for all I know. I've spent a couple dozen hours with the game and I couldn't explain the difference between the Telluride and Dionysus systems, other than the fact that one of them has an objective marker and one doesn't.

This lack of quality exploration may be a failing of new indie studio Double Damage Games, or it may be that focusing on it wasn't their intent. Regardless, my point is to avoid going in with the wrong idea—Rebel Galaxy is not a holdover for Star Citizen. It's essentially an overstretched naval combat game from the creators of Torchlight, carrying over some of its notable attributes and happening in space.

I call it naval combat partly because movement is restricted to a 2D plane, and partly because the combat leans heavily on the use of broadside cannons. In pitting one capital ship against another, a player's primary weapon fires at an angle perpendicular to the vessel's direction, meaning that positioning and speed are just as important in combat as raw firepower—it lends the adventure a quality akin to 18th century naval battles. Other games have dabbled with similar mechanics to rousing effect, and it's satisfying here.

Players can also equip their ships with supplemental turrets that are used to bring down the smaller, faster enemy craft that are allowed to break the 2D plane. It's even possible to switch control between any of the weapon systems while AI scripts handle the rest, but since the broadsides rely so heavily on the position of the vessel, I found myself using those about 98% of the time. So, save for the few occasions in which the campaign mixes up the objectives a bit, most battles played out for me in exactly the same manner.

Rebel Galaxy's combat is the sort of thing that I could see working beautifully as a small piece of a larger machine, but it's about the only trick up this particular game's sleeve, and everything else feels disappointingly undercooked.

For example, there are hints that Rebel Galaxy wants to be a space trading game, with a large number of products being sold in many stations at varying rates, but it's considerably less efficient than simply completing quests. It's duller, too, given how long it takes to get from place to place. The process was so slow, I was frequently checking my email while warping.

It's easier to tolerate the extensive travel when there's a battle at the end of the line, but the mercenary quests aren't that great either. They all draw from the same handful of objectives: bounties, deliveries, rescues and the occasional escort missions that players will quickly learn never to accept, given how inept the friendly AI pathfinding tends to be. (Seriously, watch one of these idiots try to navigate through a cluttered asteroid field.) Since Rebel Galaxy comes from the same minds that brought us Torchlight, it shouldn't be difficult to imagine that a lot of grinding is necessary to keep the player's ship up to snuff. Sadly, it's a far bigger grind than the one-note gameplay warrants.

On a positive note, I do somewhat enjoy Rebel Galaxy's "bikers in space" vibe, punctuated by a soundtrack full of distinctly American rock songs that could all double for the Sons of Anarchy theme. But while there's some immediate charm in the aesthetic, there's no substance to this fictional universe, and the facade breaks down within an hour. Most of the spoken dialog is limited to a small handful of threats repeated endlessly by the enemy ships, and there's very little visual evidence that we're exploring an expansive galaxy, particularly when every damn bartender at every damn station is the exact same bald Australian guy.

Overall, the major issue with Rebel Galaxy is that its scope feels unjustified. At no point was I doing anything other than chasing an objective marker or deciding on the next objective marker to chase. While the game spans 14 systems, it easily could have been restricted to one. In fact, a smaller scale probably would have been preferable; I'd have appreciated a reduction in the number of times an already-slow jump was brought to a halt because my ship detected some floating debris that I wouldn't have hit anyway.

I don't want to make it sound like Rebel Galaxy is completely without value. There's excitement in the precision and concentration needed to punch holes in an enemy dreadnaught's hull, and the ongoing thrill of purchasing new ships and seeing how the upgrades subtly influence one's strengths in combat isn't for nothing. That said, the game isn't deep or diverse enough to justify the 20-plus hours players can expect to invest before reaching the end. A tighter, narrower scope would have elevated Rebel Galaxy beyond being the sort of mild distraction derived from marathoning a TV show. Rating: 6.0 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 27 hours were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains violence, language and drug reference (singular). It's just a lot of bloodless spaceship action with a bit of PG-level profanity sprinkled about. Honestly, even the "Teen" rating feels like a stretch to me.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing: Subtitles are available for all dialog, and visual cues make it easy to follow what's happening without sound. No problems whatsoever.

HIGH All the combat jets anyone could ever want, all in one game.

LOW The rest of the content has a long way to go.

WTF Some of the experimental aircraft designs from the past… Wow!

Last weekend I finally had a reason to dust off my old Saitek Cyborg Evo flight stick and give it some action again, and it was all thanks to Vector Thrust.

Developed by a relatively unknown studio in Portugal, TimeSymmetry, the game puts players into the virtual cockpits of more than 250 aircraft, or at least it promises to, and couches them all in a fast-paced action-arcade flight simulator.

It entered early access in February 2015, and already boasts a lot of things to try out, albeit being still very rough around the edges. At the time this review was written, the single-player game modes were the bulk of what was playable. The multiplayer mode was available as well, but it proved too unstable for extensive testing, so it will be largely exempted in this review.

From what I gather, the multi is something of a skirmish mode which allows the player to set up a custom sortie against the AI with the ability to choose everything including maps, planes, win conditions and more. Quick Match is another mode that does basically the same, but it throws pilots into randomly generated encounters, which is nice for a quick fix of air-to-air combat without having to bother with the setup.

However, the backbone of the game (at the point I spent time with it) was the Challenge mode. Here players unlock all the nice toys for the other game modes, done by completing aircraft-specific challenges before they can be added to the roster, including all sorts of tasks ranging from stunt flying to short combat action against the clock. People with a collector's mentality will gush over the sheer amount of unlockable planes, and the developers are taking suggestions on what to add next.

As a side note, it's worth mentioning that completing these challenges not only awards new aircraft, but also points that can be spent on skipping challenges that are too hard (or too buggy—more on this later.)

Last but not least, there's also a Campaign mode that currently has two playable mission sets. Here, only selected crafts are available, and they have to be unlocked with points earned within the campaign. While all missions were playable, they seemed to be works-in-progress with regard to presentation—there were some missing voiceovers, some missing mission descriptions, and so on.

So, getting back to my Cyborg Evo, a thing that's always important for flight sims is the input, and Vector Thrust is no exception here—a gamepad or flight stick is recommended! While the game is playable with mouse and keyboard, most flight fans will find themselves wanting the sort of control that that only analog can provide. It's not a necessity, but getting behind a distracted enemy and letting the minigun roar only feels good to me when there's a trigger under my finger. Pressing down on a key just doesn't deliver the same thrill.

Technically, Vector Thrust sports a distinct cell-shaded look. Whilst this gives a more simplistic, functional appearance than other flight simulators, it never comes across as cartoony or silly. As for the audio, most of it seems fairly solid. Sound effects feel authentic and buffed, and there's something truly satisfying in the buzz of the GAU-8. The soundtrack may be a bit too reminiscent of Top Gun, but I'm not going hold against the developers.

What I've described so far might sound like an attractive package to aircraft nuts, but let me restate that at the time of play, the game was still in early access. While there was quite a bit of content already, there was still lots of polishing to be done.

As mentioned above, some mission descriptions were MIA, some of the challenges were bugged, and I had the occasional crash. The lack of real tutorials or explanations on how to use weapon systems was a bit more off-putting. Some instruction on how to deploy flares and other countermeasures would have saved me quite a few deaths. I would expect these issues to be resolved for final release, but they should be kept in mind.

At the time I saw it, I was already thinking that military aircraft enthusiasts or Ace Combat vets would certainly have a good time with Vector Thrust if they could look past some minor issues and missing polish—the myriad of planes to master provides immense replay value. TimeSymmetry still had a big list of features to implement, but they displayed close communication with players and their feedback, and I'd expect the final release to be one to watch for. Retail launch is currently scheduled for the end of June. Rating: 7 out of 10.

Disclosures: This game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. Less than 1 hour of play was spent in multiplayer modes due to its unfinished state.

Parents: This game is not rated as of yet by the ESRB or equivalent rating agencies. Explosions of aircrafts are the most, and only, visually explicit content—so an E10+ rating can be anticipated at the most.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: Most important warnings and alarms during combat also bear a visual warning, present voice-over narration was subtitled.

HIGH Watching a dreidekker fall to pieces and spin out of sight just in time to keep me from crashing into it.

LOW Playing essentially the same mission for the 85th time.

WTF How is strafing still this bad twenty years later?

I will admit to nostalgia playing a large factor in my interest in Wings: Remastered Edition. An Amiga owner in my youth, I was extremely familiar with Cinemaware's games, and Wings had been one of my favorites. Its 3D dogfighting seemed revelatory at the time, and the way the game switched between three different graphical styles for its various modes was the kind of innovative feature that few titles could compete with. Now, a new iteration of Cinemaware has re-released wings with modernized graphics and… no other enhancements. The fact that it's essentially the same game I played 20-odd years back gave me a chance to look critically at something I'd loved long ago, and while I realize that Wings is certainly an endearing title, there are fundamental problems that keep it far from greatness.

It's rare that I find myself criticizing a game for being too long, but Wings achieves that rare distinction. A World War I dogfighting simulator with strafing and bombing minigames, Wings puts players in the cockpit of a Sopwith camel tasked with shooting down German planes. The vast majority of missions place pilots in the skies above France in wood and canvas planes machine-gunning their opposition without the benefit of modern technology. Even parachutes hadn't been popularized yet—the pilots of crippled planes were expected to bring them to the ground in as few pieces as possible.

It's in these dogfighting sequences that Wings offers its best experiences. The roaring engine, whipping wind, and chattering machine guns create a convincingly thrilling atmosphere. The lack of radar or status bars gives players a chance to feel a fraction of the terror that actual pilots might have had when swinging their head around to search for any sign of the tri-plane that just disappeared from their sights. Playing just a few at a time—missions only ever last around 90 seconds—the visceral thrill of dogfighting can be fairly compelling. Any more than that, however, and the frustrating sameness of the dogfights begins to grate.

Every mission opens the exact same way—two lines of fighters heading straight for each other at equal altitude. The only variable comes with how many fighters are on each side. That's simply not enough differentiation to keep the game from feeling like it's asking players to do the same mission over and over and over again. Once in a while things are mixed up when the game calls on players to attack or defend bombers or balloons, but those missions are few and far between, with simple dogfights accounting for more than half of the game's 200-plus missions.

The minigames, bombing and strafing, also vary wildly in their quality. Bombing missions are set up as a sort of puzzle—players are shown a picture of a target and then expected to remember which specific building or bridge they're supposed to bomb as they fly over an area from a top-down perspective. They're a mildly entertaining diversion and never wear out their welcome, which certainly can't be said for the strafing minigame.

The strafing is every bit the frustrating slog it was in its original form. Players view a road from a three-quarter perspective as they move their plane around the screen shooting trucks, tents and infantry. By far the most annoying part of the game, the developers have made it bafflingly difficult to figure out how to shoot infantry, while making those same soldiers crack shots when it comes to plinking planes out of the sky. As more and more infantrymen show up in later missions, I found myself doing exactly what I had done all those years ago—just accepting that I was going to lose every strafing mission and allowing my plane to get shot down as quickly as possible to keep things moving along.

Then there's the game's advancement system. Every newly-created pilot is given a few points to mete out between a variety of skills. These affect how much damage they do, how many bullets they can take, and whether or not their guns jam—all vitally important things but the game is frustratingly oblique when it comes to skill value and improvement.

After assigning points before the first mission, players will never again see their skill bar, and the only way to find out if they're getting any better is to go to a status screen that can only give them a title to describe their skill level—no numbers allowed. The fact the players don't get to assign skill points themselves and aren't even told when skills have improved makes it seem like advancement isn't actually happening. While I'm sure maxing out all of my skills is what allows me to win some of the particularly hairy battles late in the game, because the skills increase so gradually and have no clear effect on gameplay, Wings throws away an opportunity to create the appearance of variety and innovation that the game so desperately needs.

Wings follows air combat from the beginning of the First World War all the way through Armistice Day. By the end of it, I really was completely sick of combat and only continued due to a misplaced sense of duty. In not fixing any of the old design flaws, Cinemaware has done the title a disservice. Games about the early days of air combat are few and far between, and when a dogfight gets really intense, the game accomplishes what it set out to do—there just aren't enough of those moments to make it worthwhile. In choosing to re-create Wings exactly as it was, warts and all, the developers have revealed that on a fundamental level, Wings was always more wart than it was game. Rating: 5.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 18 hours of play was devoted to single-player modes (completed 1 times).

Parents: The game wasn't rated by the ESRB, but contains blood, violence, use of tobacco and alcohol, mature subject matter. There's more than a few nods to the more questionable parts of war in Wings. Apart from the actual combat, players can kill civilians and Red Cross workers if they're not careful—they're penalized for doing so, but it's still in the game. That being said, some of the ruminations on the nature and purpose of war that come up in the diary entries that precede each mission do provide interesting food for thought—and it's not like kids are being taught about WWI in schools, so this could actually be an educational experience for your younger children.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: While most of the game is wholly playable, your inability to hear gunfire coming from offscreen will put you at a disadvantage, keeping you from being able to take evasive action before bullets start striking your fuselage.

Flight games often trend toward one of two different styles. On one side are the fast-action, arcade-like mainstays such as Afterburner or Ace Combat where the impossibility of carrying over sixty missiles at once is shoved aside in favor of letting people blast enemies from the skies with impunity. On the other end are entries like Microsoft Flight Simulator. Seemingly overwhelming in their attention to detail, these types of games take pride in making sure every single aspect of piloting is covered.

IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad falls firmly in the latter's camp. Russian-based studio 1C Games is looking to recreate one of the largest air conflicts of World War II, down to the smallest detail while also trying to overcome the difficulties they had with Battle of Stalingrad's predecessor, Cliffs of Dover. From take-off to landing in meticulously replicated cockpits, 1C Games takes pride in staying as true to reality as possible.

Battle of Stalingrad models every stick, knob, button, panel, and gauge from ten different aircraft that flew over the eponymous city from 1942 to 1943. Their commitment to accuracy is so great that if it was never used in that theater, it isn't to be found here. The lines of battle change accordingly, month after month, and each mission mirrors what actions would have been taken by the Russians at that time. The developers even consulted with real pilots to make sure everything handled correctly, including a 90-year old combat veteran who flew in the Battle of Stalingrad himself when he was only 17. The development team went to great lengths to make sure that flying in IL-2 is as close to being in the cockpit as possible.

IL-2 also makes sure its AI doesn't cheat the system in an attempt to make the game harder. Everything that a player has to do to get off the ground, the AI must do as well. That includes forcing the computer to have to push every button, twist every knob, and pull every stick required to get into the air. There's no "rubber-banding" to make sure the enemy is always on top of the player, no infinite ammo or fuel, nor any impossible maneuvers that break the physics of the world to make opponents harder to kill. If a human has to do it, so does the ghost in the machine.

The adherence to realism doesn't always work in the player's favor, however. Aircraft will suffer damage from bullets and collisions just like their real-life counterparts would. A lucky shot through the canopy can kill someone just as easily as crashing can. A burst of enemy gunfire might seem to do no damage at first, but the unseen radiator might have taken a hit.

The planes aren't the only thing 1C wanted to make true to the time. Around 48,000 square miles of Stalingrad and its surrounding environment were accurately recreated using pictures taken from the advancing German 6th Army. "The Germans did everything in order, first they would photo something, then they would destroy it," said Producer Albert Zhiltsov. "This is why we have a lot of pictures from World War II and we are able to reconstruct the city building by building."  Even the smaller suburbs and forests were recreated as closely as 1C could make them, giving the city a much needed scale that would otherwise get lost from so high up.

IL-2 Sturmovik is aiming for a September release, and while most games like this would be overshadowed in such a busy fall, fight sim players have very little to salivate over. While it might not have the same buzz as Star Citizen or Elite, IL-2 is still worth keeping an eye on for those looking to dust off their old flight sticks once more. 

High The music kicking into high gear as the dreaded blimp pokes through the clouds.

Low Going from full health to stone dead in approximately four nanoseconds.

WTF Some of the unlockable color schemes are seemingly designed for the sole purpose of making eyeballs bleed.

Luftrausers doesn't mess around getting to the point.

The player's aircraft launches from a carrier in the middle of the ocean with one objective—to blast the hell out of anything unfortunate enough to be in the general vicinity. Whether it's gunships, battleships, dogfighters, blimps or submarines that get in the way, it's all fair game to this airborne homicidal maniac as it spits bullets and bombs with reckless abandon.

The plucky airship's controls are elegant. Left and right will aim its metal snout, then another button engages thrust to blast it towards wherever it's pointing. The neat thing about this setup is that it allows for some rather fancy manoeuvres like stalling the engine to spin around and dispense death while throwing off enemy firing trajectories at the same time.

The feel of Luftrausers is excellent when shearing between laser blasts and praying that an errant projectile doesn't blow the ship to hell. It's exhilarating stuff, as is the fact that the ship can essentially defy all known laws of physics. If barrelling into the sea is the only way to avoid a barrage of gunfire, that's entirely possible.

Given how hectic everything can get onscreen, a single blow wiping out the aircraft would render the game unplayable. Thankfully, the ship can take a bit of a pounding before going up in flames, and can also heal itself as long it isn't attacking. This risk/reward system is both obvious and well-implemented, so knowing when to press forward with guns blazing and when to beat a hasty retreat is key to victory.

While Vlambeer has nailed how Luftrausers feels, the overall design doesn't quite stand up, often seeming slightly incoherent.

For example, my best score didn't come through any degree of skill on my part, the game just hurled countless waves of cannon fodder at me, leading to my kill multiplier going through the roof. Taking on larger enemies runs the risk of vaporizing both the player's ship and the score multiplier, so this swarm of low-risk adversaries helped me obliterate my old high score in the most circumstantial manner possible. It also destroyed my interest in taking the score attack seriously.

Another issue is that the player's visibility is limited to what's on screen, but that doesn't prevent off-screen projectiles from flying in. After a while these unpredictable streams of doom became increasingly annoying, and my general reaction at getting caught out in this manner went from ‘oh man, they got me' to ‘bugger this', culminating at the point where I'd just shrug my shoulders after going from full health to stone dead in less than a nanosecond.

Luftrausers is a great pick-up-and-play game in the short term, with most sessions providing a few minutes of entertainment before culminating in a bloody ship-shattering climax. The experience does wear thin over time, though, and can be a source of genuine irritation thanks to instant obliterations and the game's fickle enemy-spawning system. It's solid in small doses, but lacks the structural integrity to make it truly special. Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game is impossible to complete. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains: mild fantasy violence. And a great big grinning skull whenever the nuke goes off. Brr.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: Very little of the game relies on its sound, which emphasizes the soundtrack over audio cues. No real problems here.

HIGH I'm always up for any vehicle that transforms.

LOW Struggling (and failing) to keep up with missiles hitting friendly ships.

WTF Where's the rest of the content?

It's been a long time since I've strapped into a title about shooting bogeys in space, but Born Ready Studios has ended my drought with Strike Suit Zero. Featuring a nimble fighter that transforms into a robot, they had me on board before I ever laid eyes on it. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that it has one major problem—it's painfully boring.

The issue with Strike Suit Zero is that simply performing the act of shooting isn't a satisfying experience in and of itself. Any decent game of this sort needs supporting content and supplemental material to sell it since painting targets and lobbing missiles can only go so far. It does what it does fairly well, it just doesn't do enough.

Things start out on the right track. After a quick tutorial section, the player takes control of the eponymous ship and gets thrown into a story that has the beginnings of a nice interstellar conflict. The perfunctory tale soon falls by the wayside, but the mechanics are of good design.

While in ship configuration, it handles like any other aircraft or space fighting sim would. In robot mode, the ship's characteristics shift. Instead of continuing to fly, it starts moving with quick dash-like maneuvers, vaguely analogous to a gun turret holding a fixed point in space. While in this mode, the guns and missiles gain extra power but deplete quickly. Once the ammo runs dry, the robot converts back to spacecraft mode and recharges by taking down enemies.

What I've just described is a good, solid base to build on, but Strike Suit Zero doesn't do much past the shooting. There's no home base to go back to, there are no characters to interact with, there are no story choices to be made—there's almost nothing here besides the combat.

Speaking of the combat, the developers include far too much of it. I guess it makes sense since there's not much content otherwise, but things get intensely stale after a few missions. Worse, the levels go on and on for what feel like forever, and just when it seems like the final wave's been dealt with, here come three more. Every time. Finishing a well-designed level should bring positive feelings of accomplishment, not just relief that it's over.

While Strike Suit Zero has a solid core, it needs more development time and enrichment in nearly every aspect apart from the combat mechanics. Players looking for a megadose of space shooting will find it, but those craving a well-rounded package offering more than just dogfighting should look elsewhere. Rating: 4.5 out of 10.

Disclosures: This game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 4 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains: violence. Space ships shoot other space ships in space. There's no blood or graphic imagery, no salty language and no sexual content.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: No problems here. The dialogue is subtitled and all pertinent info is displayed on-screen.

HIGH Finding out what happened to the main character post-game.

LOW Why are there rail shooter segments?

WTF Am I seriously spraying Agent Orange over rural Vietnam?

There's a famous Francois Truffaut quote which states that it's impossible to make an anti-war film, since simply showing the action of war will make the whole endeavor seem thrilling and glamorous no matter the filmmaker's intentions. He was wrong, of course—as many filmmakers have proven, it's simply a matter of presenting war in such an unpleasant way that no one could want to be involved in it.

Whether it's possible to make an anti-war video game is a much trickier question. Won't a developer's desire to make a strong statement against war be sidelined by their need to entertain players with 'fun' gameplay centered around killing enemies?

Hideo Kojima continually makes arguments against militaristic dehumanization in Metal Gear Solid titles, a message that tends to get slightly undercut when the game's plots focus on a badass soldier who keeps saving the world. Spec Ops: The Line attempted the same point by utilizing the power of heavy-handed moralizing designed to make the player feel guilty for enjoying their well-produced third-person shooter. I would argue that it isn't until Air Conflict: Vietnam that anyone has made a truly successful anti-war game.

Their secret? It's not a good video game.

On its face, making a game about Vietnam-era air combat feels like an impossible task because, for the most part, there wasn't any. One might expect the game to sidestep this fact and include an unrealistic amount of the dogfights that players come to flight simulators expecting. Not only does AC:V not attempt to goose historical accounts for the sake of marketability, it's honest and upfront about the difficulties in making their subject matter engaging. In one of the 'true war factoids' that pops up on loading screens, the game makes mention of the fact that while over five hundred Phantom Jets were lost during the 15-year Vietnam conflict, less than 10 were actually shot down by Vietnamese planes.

So if players aren't going to be engaging in nail-biting air combat, what is the game for? Its primary goal is to simulate the experience of dropping a tiny fraction of the tons of explosives the US dropped on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. All of this is accomplished with only the barest minimum of opposition from AI foes. An occasional MiG will show and put up some token resistance, but they're so easy to defeat that it comes across as a metaphor for how incredibly overmatched the NVA were when it came to air power. The major foe that the game presents is the inconvenient truth that it's nearly impossible to bomb a populace into submission without earning the ire of the entire planet.

This brings me to the game's key narrative framework, which is also its rhetorical masterstroke—between missions, the main character receives letters from a variety of characters stateside, all of them genre standards such as Worried Mother, Impressionable Younger Brother, Supportive Wife and Idolizing Daughter. While none of it is well-written enough to be genuinely touching, the building blocks are established solidly enough that players can get the point. There's also a voiceover comment at the beginning of the game that seems to come from an older, more resentful version of the main character who knows just how badly this whole war is going to turn out.

That's a key element, because it's the one attempt at character building that the developers make. For the rest of the game, the main character is defined by his inactivity.

While the characters at home gradually turn against the war, alternately blaming the main character for his role in it and simply begging him to come home, he remains frustratingly impassive. Gradually it becomes clear that the player is controlling a representation of the entire US government, which theoretically could have stopped the war at any moment, yet refused to, for reasons that seemed more nebulous with each passing year.

I don't believe I'm reading too much into the game's intentions here—not only is it dedicated to all victims of war, but the developers make their intentions clear about what the main character represents by giving him one of the darkest and most unsettling video game endings I've ever come across.

With AC:V attempting to make such a powerful rhetorical point, it's too bad they muddy their message by making half of the game a series of terrible helicopter missions.

Going from bombing runs set thousands of feet in the air to low-level strafing with an entirely different set of controls is a jarring change as it is, but what really turns these sequences into pure garbage is how completely they interfere with everything else the game is trying to accomplish.

I suppose, if one were willing to really reach, they could claim some satirical message is being made by asking players to indiscriminately fire rockets in clear residential areas, but the missions feel like a thousand other helicopter combat games, only with worse production values. The less said about the door-gunner sequences that pop up at the end of some missions, the better. As I'm asked to gun down hundreds of stick figures with a machine gun and throw grenades at tanks, the game has gone from an incisive critique of war to something with all the sensitivity of Operation Wolf.

While it's impossible for any game to convey the experience of the Vietnam War to players, Air Conflict: Vietnam's senses-dulling mediocrity manages to express just how pointless and destructive the entire endeavor was. While I doubt there's a large audience interested in playing a game specifically about the fact that the game shouldn't be played, for anyone curious as to whether a truly anti-war game can be made, the question now has an answer. Anyone who makes it all the way through AC:V will find themselves on the other side of an experience designed to make war seem not just harrowing, but entirely without cause or merit. It may not be a good game, but it is an important one. Rating: 4 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Xbox 360. Approximately 8 hours of play was devoted to single-player modes (completed 1 times). Multiplayer modes were not sampled.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains blood, mild lyrics, violence. Parents might want to force their children to play this game. It sounds crazy, but in a world of military recruitment tools disguised as entertainment, it might do them well to play a game about the futility of conflict for a change. Maybe if they spend a few hours flying in straight lines, dropping bombs on indistinct squiggles far below, and then have their loved ones question their motives for continuing to take part in carnage they'll give a second before cheering on real wars in the future. I didn't notice the 'mild lyrics' the warnings suggest, but I had the music off for most of the game.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: should be mostly okay. There are almost no audio cues in combat, and the all-important story sections are fully written out as text.