Well, since Alkaiser couldn't get this game to run on his system, he gave it to me to mess with since Ebworld.com doesn't take returns, much like every other game store in existance. I put it in, and it booted, but I really can't say it was anything close to bug free, but despite all its flaws was pretty enjoying. If you're wondering why I don't recommend buying the game, I really don't like the gaming industry's attitude towards releasing unfinished products, and I will not recommend anything that needs a patch to be downloaded, after the user has already shelled out good money for the priviledge of playing.
The game is set in an "alternate timeline". It's essentially the same timeline, with more advanced aircraft. You play Nathan Zachary, a pilot with two first names and a love for flying, women, and treasure, and not necessarily in that order. You lead a group of pilots named the Fortune Hunters, who, coincidentally, are trying to make a fortune. Your character sounds like the guy who does the voice for "The Tick", but I'm not exactly sure about that.
Your main base of operations is the zepplin the "Pandora", a shameless reference to the Microsoft puzzle game "Pandora's Box". You "dock" with the Pandora by sticking a little rod out of your plane that is grabbed on to by the docking arm. Yes, it does look really stupid.
In between dogfighting, you'll have to do a whole bunch of little tedious things that can jeopardize your mission. The mission designers didn't learn anything from the guys who designed the missions in Wing Commander, or Descent: Freespace, or X-Wing, or Privateer. Players really don't like doing all the fighting to have their entire mission potentially FUBAR-ed by having to do something like skim the top of a trailer truck to pick up a passenger before the trailer driver is detained by the cops. The worst thing about these little "oh, isn't that the darndest coincidence" objectives, is that you won't know about it until after you've been taking damage and fighting for 15 minutes or so, and at that point you really don't want to start the mission over for something as trivial as that. But you end up having to do it, mission after mission, retry after retry.
Another thing that is really stupid are the freakin' missions that involve you having to engage in stunt contests to progress the mission. There's one mission, an obvious trap, where you have to fly through 9 obstacles on the Hughes production set. Most of these are ok, but it took me around 15 retries until I could fly through both end of the bridge without crashing. I swear, I hadn't seen the words "Fatal Crash!" this many times since I was running Windows 95. After finally making it through all that, you have to fly under a bridge, and then obstacle 7 is to fly through the "O" in the "Hollywood" sign, which I had shot up. The "O" is barely large enough to accomodate your plane vertically. I never made it through, and just skipped that mission.
Yet another frequent mission ender is that your freakin' "friends" in your squad will decide that the best possible flight path for them invovles flying right through your fuselage. I've had this happen no less than 10 times. I swear, I end up going down more often than Britney Spears. The enemy AI isn't too bright, either. There isn't much in the way of evasive action as far as the other pilots go. All the enemy Aces are rediculously easy to shoot down, and I think my least frequent cause of death is being shot down by the enemy.
After finishing a mission, you get a bunch of newspaper clipping detailing your exploits, and more mementos to choose from. The mementos are cool, and I'd probably give the game a much lower score if it weren't for all the nice story put into it. Occasionally you'll hijack another plane, or get some money so you can design a new plane to fly around in. However, there are problems here, as you'll see in the section of this review that deals with the bugs.
Despite all the design flaws, the game's still pretty fun, but short, I ended up finishing it off in under 3 days, but it only cost Alkaiser $29.99, so I suppose I might have bought it at that price, if it werent for the bugs.
The problems start from the moment you hit the first menu. (By the way, I'm running the patched version.) If you go to the Plane Construction menu, you're likely to spot it there first, textures start going missing, and in their place...an empty space. This gets really irritating if you're trying to do something as simple as clicking on a button. What's up with that? Microsoft WRITES DirectX, and they can't write a game that works with their own libraries for their own operating system? Maybe they're not as tightly-knit a monopoly as the goverment makes it seem.
Anyway, the problems continue on into the game, where you'll lose textures on nearly everything out there. It gets kind of ironic later in the game. I was fighting a band of pirates known as the Black Hats on a night mission. It became really easy to pick out their fighters because they were all missing textures, and were stark white. You'll also lose text that's supposed to pop up in-game, so you won't be able to tell whether that was your wingman who just went down, or an enemy pilot.
In addition, the game starts to slow down. This is absolutely unacceptable on a 950-Mhz processor, with a GeForce2 MX. This thing should be running smoother and faster than a Canadian sprinter on steroids. This is noticeable when you have the "spyglass" on any you're anywhere near a zeppelin, and there are a ton of missions that involve you defending, destroying, or disabling another zeppelin, so expect to experience this quite a bit. There's apparently a "hack" that involves doing something to the swap files that will speed the game up, but I didn't try it, personally.
I would recommend buying this game if it weren't for all the bugs. The flaws detract from the game, but probably only a star's worth. I'd give this game 4 if it weren't for all the problems that this game has just working. It's unacceptable, and these things do detract from the overall game experience, and they're all over the net. Please keep that in mind before purchasing this game.
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