Preview: Air Conflicts: Pacific Carriers

Flight simulation games are generally a dying breed with the main game being Ace Combat, with very few other games coming instantly to mind. However, hopefully Air Conflicts will be changing that.

Although it has a very stereotypical name, it pretty much does what it says on the tin, it is actually a pretty good Flight Sim. It’s based around WW2 and the level that I got to play was Pearl harbour, both from the American and the Japanese point of views. Offering both of these viewpoints made the game more varied, as both nations have different types of planes as well. The Americans have more bomber heavy style planes whereas the Japanese planes are much more lightweight and faster.

With those two different styles it means that you have to change the way you play the game with each nation. The American ones are easier to use for ground attacks, being able to bomb more than one target at the same time, whereas the Japanese style is catching up with the other planes and shooting them down.

Within each nation there are three different styles of planes, Fighter, Bomber and Torpedo planes. Again each one requires a different style of game-play as each one has different styles of weapons and targets. The fighters are mainly used to shoot down enemy fighter planes but they can also be used for AA guns, whereas the bombers are used more for bombing targets. The torpedo planes are the most frustrating and least useful as their a lot more difficult to control, but the torpedo’s can be used as bombs, so theoretically there not to much different from bombers.

The main point that made the game stand out was that when you run out of ammo you can switch into a different plane, with all the ammo topped up and full health. Then the plane you switched out of becomes unplayable for a while, but when it comes back you have full ammo and can then be re-used. Even when your shut down, as long as you have planes in reserve you can switch out to another plane in the squadron. This means that unless you get shot down, it makes it a lot easier to complete the mission.

The demo that I managed to play was the battle of Pearl Harbour, one of the most iconic air fights from WW2, and it was very well re-created. As mentioned before you can play as both the Japanese and the Americans, you can play it from both sides. It offers two completely different perspectives to the game. This has made me rather interested in this game, and I look forward to seeing how it will differ from other flight sim games that are on the market at the moment.

This game looks rather interesting, and will hopefully manage to knock off Ace Combat off the top of the flight sim charts. Definitely a game worth keeping an eye out for.

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