And though that's largely what we're getting with the sequel Secret Weapons Over Normandy, a few changes have been thrown in to the mix, not all of them for the better. First and foremost, Secret Weapons attempts to bridge the gap between historical accuracy and arcade sensibility. Part of this can be explained by the downward spiral of the profitability of sim genre over the last few years. LucasArts can realize much higher returns on their investment development with the PS2 and Xbox versions and it's apparent that that's the target for this game.
Gameplay
You'll play as Chase, an American pilot serving with the RAF at the start of the Dunkirk evacuation. (As Hitler's armies rolled across Northern France, the English had to perform a miraculous and rapid evacuation of their forces on the continent.) After showing your mettle in this mission, you're recruited into the Battlehawks, an elite international squadron designed to counter-act Germany's infamous Nemesis Squadron. And though this concept of an elite Allied squadron fighting on all fronts provides a great survey to the action and planes of the war, it also offers very little in the way of narrative cohesion.
For one thing, there's very little sense of character or story in the game. Since you're traveling from one area of the war to another, it's hard to tie one mission to the next. A History Channel-style presentation gives you context for the particular engagement but the game might have made better use of the actual characters from your squadron (and your enemy's) to create some meaningful emotional connections here but instead we're simply presented with a variety of players who are only differentiated by their names and accents. There's the plain-speaking American pilot, the stuffy Brit, the arrogant German and few others but none stand out as particularly memorable or engaging.
Some continuity is provided by the letters Chase writes between the missions but these have their own problems. Though the game makes certain allowances with the history, I still can't swallow the fact that a member of an elite air squadron would write such detailed descriptions of his plans to his parents. "Hey, mom! Tomorrow we're attacking a V-2 rocket plant! Don't tell Jerry!" It might sound nitpicky, but these small inconsistencies go a long way towards reminding you that you're just playing a game.
The missions themselves are fairly diverse, ranging from ground support actions where you have to protect the advance of your tanks from enemy forces on the ground to ship strikes where you have to torpedo certain destroyers or transports while keeping others safe. And of course, there's plenty of aerial action here as well. Dogfight and bomber intercepts are definitely the main course here. The team makes good use of scripting within the missions to give them a more dynamic character and a handy checkpoint system ensures that you won't have to start from scratch if you auger in during the last few minutes of a mission. A range of hidden bonus objectives are included for you overachievers out there and these can help unlock extra upgrade tokens for your planes.
While I completely applaud the team for including so many planes in the game, the fact that a new plane pretty much opens up with every successful mission means you won't get to spend much time in the air with each of them. Your sojourns in the Spitfire and 109s are far too brief, in my opinion. Though many of the early missions select a particular plane for you, once you're allowed to select a particular plane to fly, you'll find that the more advanced designs get much more playtime. I, myself, found the Me 262 (the world's first operational jet fighter) to be pretty secure at the top of the fighter food chain. Given the small range of planes you'll actually use on a regular basis, you'll soon find yourself equipped with many more upgrade tokens than you'll actually need.
You're given a few control options here, one designed for easy gamepad action and one designed to mirror a more sophisticated flight stick approach. If, like me, you actually have a decent stick and throttle set attached to your PC, the more advanced controls are the way to go. The biggest advantage of the advanced controls is that you get a separate control for the rudder by moving the right analog stick left and right. Without the advanced controls enabled (which is the default configuration of the game) both your roll and yaw are mapped to the right and left direction of your left analog stick.
While this makes things a bit easier, you lose the separate rudder control sometimes needed to line up a shot. You also can't get the quick snap rolls that can sometimes save your ass. The Dual Shock and Controller-S setups are virtually identical, so your selection of platform here should be based on your controller preference. Having a separate rudder and throttle control on my PC, I preferred playing with the advanced controls there but shifted back to the basic controls for the PS2 and Xbox versions. As an added bonus, the game offers force feedback cues for things like stalls.
But though stalls are possible here, they are, like the rest of the physics, very relaxed. High-G turns aren't much of a problem here, particularly in the more nimble aircraft. Though it compromises the historical accuracy somewhat, it's a great concession for keeping the action and intensity up. Then again, being able to slam your aircraft down with only five feet of runway left and count is as a landing is a bit silly. (I won't even begin to discuss the large icon you can fly through to automatically land your plane.) The overall flight modeling has little to offer in the way of collisions. I can deal with the relaxed collisions in terms of brushing wingtips, but when you slam the nose of your plane right into the middle of an enemy Ju88, you expect to see some real damage. Instead all you get is a brief bounce and you're suddenly careening in a new direction.
You can quickly find the enemy you have targeted by holding down a padlock key. This rotates the camera in the direction of your enemy and lets you see where he is in relation to your plane and where he's heading. The developers swear by this tool but I honestly haven't found much use for it beyond checking to see if an opponent is lining up a shot on my tail. Otherwise, a handy arrow icon points in the direction of your enemy (and indicates the degree of separation between your nose and his location) and that provides more than enough situational awareness for your purposes. You can cycle through ground and air targets separately here but there's no hot key for jumping right to a key mission objective. Trying to nail that last transport amid a dozen AA guns can be more time-consuming than it needs to be.
I like the third person perspective but, overall, the camera is far too stiff. Around here we describe the camera as sitting on a broomstick coming out of your plane's ass. Games that involve piloting a plane (or spaceship, flying dragon, etc.) should definitely allow for a bit more elasticity in the camera than we see here. In this case, the movement of your plane is tracked almost without hesitation by the trailing camera. Compared to the slight delay in camera movement found in Crimson Skies and Sky Odyssey, this one just seems much less lively.Thankfully, the AI is much livelier than the camera. Though you're presented with a few dogs who don't even seem to notice you're filling their crate full of holes, most of the enemies respond pretty quickly to your threats. You're still more likely to die as a result of not paying attention than you are from the ability of your opponents but they provide a reasonable challenge and, in any case, are meant to be fodder for the player's enjoyment. It's significant that the big nemesis of the game doesn't seem to fly any smarter than the rest of the crowd. He's simply given a better plane with much more armor than his wingmates.
If things ever get too hairy, you can use the game's adjustable clock to slow down the action. (It's not the like the constant lead-indicator isn't enough help.) I've played through a few entire missions using this special slow-motion mode and have found myself able to stick much more tightly to my enemy's tail -- my accuracy jumped from 15% to 85%. It's also good for strafing numerous targets in a row. For those extended sequences where you're traveling between targets, you can speed up the clock to get there quicker.
As you complete the missions, you'll open up new single challenges that can be completed for extra upgrade tokens or unlock new aircraft. These are usually variations on the main mission you just completed and offer a chance to run through again and try to achieve other objectives. You'll also unlock several short movies that showcase the developers at work recording surviving models of these planes at an airfield. In all each of these clips lasts only 30 seconds or so and you won't find yourself watching them again once you've seen them once.
Finally, there's the modest multiplayer portion of the game. There's absolutely no online support for any of the versions and, worse still, the PC has no multiplayer whatsoever. On the Xbox and PS2 you'll have a number of head to head missions where you can take on a buddy in a fight to the death. There are also cooperative missions where you and said buddy fly on the same side and compete to get the most kills. Rather than being limited to dogfights, some of these missions ask you to take out an enemy prison camp or sink enemy shipping. While it makes a nice diversion, the appeal of multiplayer doesn't last terribly long.
Graphics
While it's not a graphical showcase, the team has done a fairly good job of recreating the entire environment of World War II. The terrain can be a bit taxing on your system, particularly the textures used in the large snowy areas, but they look reasonably good. I particularly like the grainy quality of the textures used for structures. It can give the game a bit of a muddy look, but it really helps evoke the period.
The planes look just as you'd expect them to but as an added bonus, the team has included moveable control surfaces. Seeing the rudders and ailerons animate as you put your plane through its paces is a nice reward. Things like contrails also help add a sense of speed and direction to your planes. The models themselves are a tad blocky but, considering the number of enemies that can be in the air at once, this is a concession to maintaining a healthy framerate.
Explosions and damage modeling is also quite well done. Seeing the enemy planes fall apart under a hail of fire is one of the things that keeps you coming back for more. They trail smoke as they fly around the sky and, if you damage them enough, you're rewarded with a brilliant trail of flame that really makes your enemy stand out during the nighttime missions.Sound
There are two high points here: the music and sound effects. The score for the game is simply fantastic, making use of an idiom that's instantly familiar from its presence in numerous other World War II themed games. The audio designers have taken every possible care to get recordings from period equipment. And though it's hard to find out what a .50 cal round sounds like when it slams into the tailfin of a Spitfire, they've managed to create a really great approximation of it. More impressively, they've managed to track down many of the planes in the game, in some cases with the original engines still intact. They've covered every inch of these planes, recording the sounds of all the control surfaces as well as the engines. The result is quite remarkable.
Beyond that, I found the voice work wasn't up to the standards set by the other areas of the game's sound. Though fine from a standpoint of fidelity, the accents-masquerading-as-characters simply don't sell the excitement and interest I hoped to find here. There's plenty of radio chatter in the missions and that helps add a bit of life to the hum of engines and stutter of 50 caliber guns. It's just the overall presentation of characters that's off here, not any particular technical problem.
Verdict
The failure of flight sims has become something of a joke in our industry. As gaming has gone more mainstream, there's less patience on the part of gamers to wade through a 200-page manual just to find out how to feather their props. Even putting a plane on the front of your box can dissuade many gamers who might appreciate the more action-oriented approach found therein. Crimson Skies for the PC is a great example. And while Totally Games has done a pretty good job of preserving some sense of realism in what is basically a fantasy flying game, I think the concessions have been weighted more on the side of convenience than realism. I can appreciate it as a fun action game but it holds little of the weight you'd expect from a World War II dogfight game. The lack of a compelling narrative enhances this pick-up-and-play mentality and detracts from my own involvement in what's going on.
Secret Weapons Over Normandy makes a much bigger splash on the PS2 than it does on the PC and Xbox. Admittedly there haven't been many action dogfighters on the PC lately, but the system does have a considerable backlog of titles that offer better experiences than the one we have here. Likewise, the recent release of Crimson Skies for the Xbox, similarly hampers Secret Weapons' success on that platform.
In the end, it seems as if Totally Games was holding back, hoping like hell not to overly smartify the title for a console audience. Before you start flaming, that's not a rip on the ability or attitude of console gamers at all; I just think console gamers are perfectly capable of rising beyond the challenges presented here. But the developers seem to have hedged their bets on this one, opting instead for greater accessibility at the cost of increased immersion.
