No goose, no good. Review

No goose, no good.

I’m not gonna pull your chain, beat around the bush or humor you to keep your

attention for the duration of this review. Hopefully, your insightful gamer-sense

is tingling like you just swallowed a jellyfish or something. If not, it should

be. Frankly, if you turned your browser to another review, I would applaud you.

Top Gun: Combat Zones is just another one of those things you want to

run over and leave for dead on a deserted road somewhere. Roadkill, there we

go. That’s the perfect name. This game is about as useful to a gamer as fresh

roadkill.

Titus’ new arcade style flight combat mess is an all around bad game, from

the plot all the way down to the control.

The story is pretty lame and has absolutely nothing to do with the movie. The

Combat Zone is a glorified VR training program set up to improve a pilot’s performance

in the field. It recreates and simulates popular battles from history. Skirmishes

from the Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War and others make up your settings.

That’s pretty much it. No real goal and no real story since it’s only a training

program.

You fly through a series of 36 linear missions over 4 locations while engaging

in air-to-air and surface-to-air battles. All this means is that you will be

visiting the same four lackluster areas 9 times apiece. The missions

have no cohesion and are thrown at you very randomly, bouncing you around the

globe with no hint as to why. Since the story is nonexistent, don’t expect any

between mission dialogue or cinemas to glue the missions together. The whole

game plays like consecutive quick start missions. It doesn’t really inspire

you to play at all.

And why do you pilot modern day aircraft if the VR training is from battles

that took place over thirty years ago? Not only are the crafts chronologically

displaced, but their numbers are few. You’ll fly the Navy’s F-14, F-18, F-22,

and a couple others. This hardly compares to Airforce

Delta Storm‘s massive list of planes.

The weapons are simple. You fire rockets, surface-to-air missiles, air-to-air

missiles and drop a few bombs. Pretty standard fare for a modern day flight

game. But the explosions are missing that fiery, destructive flair you want

to see after shooting several missiles at one target. No pilot worth his weight

in memory cards is gonna be satisfied with the paltry firecracker explosions

Top Gun dishes out.

The remaining graphical features are weak. It’s hard to make out enemies on

the ground because there’s no texture detail. The planes can’t hold a candle

to Airforce Delta Storm‘s intricately detailed crafts. Heck, even the

‘before mission’ briefing map is featureless. This is probably one of the most

important aspects of the game since it’s dotted with objectives. The problem

is, you can barely see them. At least the lens flare from the sun is decent.

Although Top Gun‘s shortcomings are many, there is one that dwarfs them

all – the mind-burning control. Pitch, ascent and descent are all controlled

with the left analog stick, while L1 and L2 handle your turning from left to

right. This is absolutely backwards! Pitch should be controlled with the triggers

and turning with the left stick. The default configuration is nearly impossible

to use comfortably. I never got used to it. Since it’s all on the same stick,

I often found myself upside-down or doing a barrel roll at the most inopportune

moments. There are a few alternate control configurations, but all of them use

the left analog stick in the same way.

To make matters worse, they decided to throw in special maneuvers to help aid

you in avoiding enemy fire. By pressing L3, you can perform special braking

maneuvers, jinks, half-rolls and a couple others. But again, heaping all this

on the left analog stick just compounds the control problems, as you’re frequently

doing many more stunts than you should. Needless to say, the result is a lot

of senseless crashing and burning.

The audio score is nothing to write home about. It’s fine. The engine sounds

work well for the game, missiles and rockets whiz by with adequate sounds and

explosions bang and boom the way they should. The sound is probably the best

part about the game.

Top Gun: Combat Zones is not worth a purchase, a rental or even a glance.

The story isn’t there, the gameplay is very boring, the graphics aren’t good

and the control will leave you craving for the blood of a programmer. Even Tom

Cruise should pass.