Surprisingly fun, Snoopy Flying Ace has taught me all about aviation combat
Basically Snoopy Flying Ace is about air combat. You, and the other players choose from a list of classic Peanuts characters including Snoopy, Linus, Sally, Lucy, Pigpen and Charlie Brown. Each character has a few skins and more are included in the add on for additional MS points. Choosing your character doesn't affect the game, but it is nice to see Charlie Brown shoot down Lucy's plane. That'll teach her from pulling the damn football out before he can kick it! Basically there are a few variations of the three basic types of plane, excluding DLC planes. The planes are medium planes, balanced between health, speed and handling, fast planes which are fast and easy to handle, but are weak in HP, and heavy planes, slow, wallowing but can take a beating. Thinking back, I can't remember exactly how many weapons there are, but most people only use the EMP, squitos, blunderbuss, leeches, rainmakers and some use the tarpedo. Two special weapons can be used on a plane, and can be swapped out mid match. You always have a normal machine gun as well, which can overheat. Special guns have a charge and once the charge is used up then they have to recharge.There are plenty of different weapons that can be used but most people only use a few favorites. The plane combat takes place on different maps with obstacles that you can fly over and take cover behind. There are standard gametypes such as deathmatch and team deathmatch and some such as pigskin, which is pretty much CTF. There can be up to 16 players in a game, which means the air space can be pretty crowded. Kill streaks are awarded for shooting enemy planes down in a row. First you get a Woodstock tailgunner, which is Woodstock carrying two big revolvers. He shoots planes down that are tailing you which is pretty cool. If you get a 10 kill streak you are upgraded to Snoopy's Doghouse, which has you flying the best plane in the game. The primary machine gun gets upgraded as do the health handling and speed. Now to fly a plane is standardized plane controls, but it takes a while to get used to. Your plane can roll from side to side, do flips and other types of aerial maneuvers to get pursuing planes off of your tail. The real good flyers are actually incredible to watch at this game, because of how skillful they are at flying. There are achievements and avatar awards, which everyone loves. If you get to the max ranks online your avatar gets the Red Baron costume and for beating the single player a Snoopy T-shirt is awarded.
The single player is pretty much the only bad thing about this game which isn't actually too bad. It gets kind of boring and derivative to do these missions but it's a good way to polish up your skills before heading online. These missions can also be done co-operative so if you want to go through with a friend it can be done. Also if you don't want to play online then there is the option to fight CPU bots for some practice and achievements, although it is not as fun as fighting real people.
Now this game isn't exactly revolutionary in terms of graphics and gameplay, but for a relatively cheap form of entertainment and a trip down memory lane it isn't too bad. The graphics are 3D and are of a cartoon nature (obviously). They aren't stellar, but aren't horrible either. The controls are fairly sharp and responsive, but sometimes it gets disorientating with the camera when performing complex maneuvers. Weapon controls are a little jittery but with practice they can be used with ease.
The good: - fairly good bang for your buck
- a fun aviator combat which is hard to come by these days
- Nostalgia factor, god I feel old
- Avatar Awards
- Good plane controls
- fair graphics
- awesome multiplayer
The bad: - sometimes bad camera, especially when performing complex maneuvers
- Steeper learning curve
- Not so good single player
- Jittery weapon controls for a beginner
Altogether it is an awesome game that I would recommend to anyone, especially for 800 MS points. Cheers