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Air Force Delta Storm |
by Sebastian
10/4/2001 |
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Having played Air Force Delta on the Dreamcast a while ago, and not liking it at all, I was very much afraid to pick up the Xbox controller, and give Air Force Delta Storm a try. After all, how can we forget the sub-par graphics, and nauseating techno music that accompanied the poor Dreamcast title. To my surprise, I was quite pleased with what Konami has brung to the Xbox.
In terms of gameplay, AFDS is very close to it's Dremcast brother, except for a few changes. You no longer have that feeling of "what am I doing here" , when you are playing a mission. In the original, you felt as if the mission came to you, instead of you coming to the mission. Rest assured that this has been changed to a greater degree. Now, just like the successful Ace Combat series, you feel as if you are in the mission, battling it out with the enemy. This has been done by having a denser battlefield. In the stages that I played, there was a greater amount of enemy units in the map overall, and you no longer had to travel some distance to actually get to a target. Gameplay will consist of you infiltrating bases, fighting enemy jets, SAM sites, and enemy turrets that will put up walls of flak, hoping you catch some of it, and go plumeting down in a ball of fire and crushed steel. Now, how does that sound for gamplay? I thought so. 50+ missions will be available for your shooting down pleasure.
There will be tons of jets to fly, both real, and some made out of the little dreams we dream at night. You'll be able to pilot F-14 Tomcat's, A-10 Warthog's, F-18 super hornets,F-22 Raptor's, and even a few Japanese planes thrown in just for fun. Overall, you can expect over 70 planes to be availble at your disposal. This is the Gran Turismo of fighters, folks.
Control is coming along nicely. Though the novice control scheme leaves something to be desired, as it should, because it's for novices, the expert control scheme is coming along nicely. With expert controls, you can bank, do flips, and rolls very nicely. Though it still needs some touching up on, especially in the missile lock-on, and gas buttons, i'm sure it will be fixed for launch.
The graphics of AFDS are very good. Sure, this isn't the best game to show off what the Xbox can do, but the graphics will please anyone who gets ahold of this game for five minutes. You have high polygon counts on all the planes. Everything animates very well. Rudders, flaps, and even the air brakes all look very good. Self shadowing on the jet fighters is also a nice sight to see, that is, if you can get a few seconds to look at it as you roll from side to side trying to evade enemy missiles coming at you. Unlike Air Force Delta for Dreamcast, you don't have to worry about pop-up, draw-in, or anything like that. You can look for miles in either direction, and not see one single pop-up on the whole entire mission. Fog, missile contrails, and explosions all look very good. The game also plays at a blistering 60 FPS. Terrain looks fantastic, and buildings look very good as well. Though there was some excessive use of fog on higher altitudes, I am positive that Konami will fix that before the launch of the game. Overall, expect a good ride with AFDS.
This preview was brought to you by the always annoying tanmeatloaf. If you have questions, comments, or insults, please E-mail me at sebastian@xbox365.com I always read your E-mail, even though it may be boring.
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