Title: Air Conflicts: Aces of World War II
Price: $29.99
System(s): PSP
Release Date: April 7, 2009
Publisher (Developer): Graffiti Entertainment (Cowboy Rodeo)
ESRB Rating: “Teen” for Violence
Pros: 14 different planes, single UMD multiplayer option, auto-take off, simple controls
Cons: No ‘free-fly’ mode, tiny text, long loading times, no auto-target
Overall Score: Two thumbs sideways, 70/100, C-, ** out of 3
Air Conflicts: Aces of World War II has its merits and can be entertaining, but I found myself blinded by the flaws during my experiences playing. As an intermediate flight sim player, the quirks made it difficult for me to play, but I can imagine flight sim fans and experts having an easier time and better experience than my own.
Do your part in World War II as an aerial ace.
Air Conflicts: Aces of War II is a fairly accurate recreation of the World War II air missions. Players choose to be representative of the US Air Force (USA), the Royal Air Force (England), the Luftwaffe (Germany) or the Red Army Air Force (USSR). You then go through different kinds of missions for your side, trying to do your best to succeed.
Missions offer quite a bit of variety. While the typical mission sends you out to shoot down opposing aircraft, there’s a different focus and purpose so you have to think out the best course of action. For example, sometimes you have to protect an area, or support other aircraft, bomb areas, take out enemies or deploy people or supplies. It offers an unexpected strategic element.
Be patient and prepared to squint.
Air Conflicts: Aces of World War II looks very polished, which is a definite point in its favor. It also has great general controls that are very simple to use. The automatic take-off feature is especially nice, but it’s a shame that there couldn’t be some kind of automatic targeting system implemented as well.
There are 13 planes, but be ready to be satisfied with just one for a while. Each side begins with one plane, and you have to work up to and earn others. Nice. There’s a gallery though, so you can look through and see what you’re missing.
The text is small. Beyond small. Minuscule is a better word for it. To make matters worse, in some situations the choice of color makes it difficult to read it against the background. In a play period of 15 minutes, I found myself leaning forward, squinting and struggling to read mission briefings or directions. Eventually, I gave up and would go into a level shooting anything with a red triange above it, hoping for the best.
Then there’s the loading. I’m used to loading in PSP games – I typically play RPGs. Air Conflicts: Aces of World War II‘s loading times are among the longest and most annoying I’ve seen. You load to start the game. You load before each mission. Load after each mission. To make matters worse, each loading period will be so long that the system’s backlight goes out.
Adequate but not outstanding
If you’re familiar with flight simulator games, Air Conflicts: Aces of World War II could very easily end up being active in your PSP game rotation. If you’re not, then the loading, text and absent targeting system could turn you away. There are flaws, but fans of the genre should be able to overcome or overlook them.
Was the game tested with a first generation PSP or a later model (PSP-2000 or PSP-3000)? Was the UMD cache feature enabled to help with the loading times or does it just suck?
On my PSP-2004 it takes 17 seconds to load the menu (on startup or after a mission) and 42 seconds to load a mission. It certainly could be better but I've seen worse.
I played it on a PSP slim, 2000 model. Like Vesuri said, it would take about 40-50 seconds to load missions and it definitely could have been worse, but for a flight sim I expected much shorter loading times. When a mission starts, there's no loading during it, but there's always loading before and after.
I don't have my PSP nearby to check at the moment, so I'm not sure if the UMD cache was enabled or not.