Dogfight 1942 (XBLA): "WWII Aerial Combat With A Somewhat Realistic Design"

I have played only a handful of war based aerial combat titles in my time as a gamer, and as such doing this review was in many ways a first for me. As a gamer, and person in general my knowledge of the wars is honestly limited. Being able to play a game such as "Dogfight 1942" sort of allowed me to broaden my horizons in that area though. The realistic nature of the character interactions along with the well played historical battles shed some light on the subject for me.With their latest creation City Interactive has delivered a gaming experience that is both interesting, and somewhat engaging. While I cannot confirm it, I believe that they actually went out of their way to recreate significant details with their campaign reenactments. Some of it I'm sure is probably more on the side of fiction, but at least the game is based on real events though.

In Dogfight 1942's campaign mode you will take on the role of several different pilots as they fight to protect ships, other pilots, and locales from opposing enemy attacks. While the story is limited to brief pre-game dialogue boxes, and short cutscenes you will get a feeling for the importance of each mission. As one of the several WWII pilots you will fly a variety of different planes including large bombers, and smaller planes that maneuver more quickly than their more bulky counterparts. Each plane you pilot will grant you the use of machine guns that will occasionally run out of ammo, and torpedos/missiles that refill after use. Aiding you with the objective of downing planes/ships/rockets is a targeting system consisting of a colored diamond (Red, Yellow, Blue, Green) which helps you identify your comrades as well as your enemies. Following along with each plane is a crosshair that will allow you to target the planes, and ships more easily. These crosshairs follow each plane at a distance giving the game a more realistic targeting system. If you are able to target, and down a plane in the proper way you will be rewarded with a killcam view that will show the plane's crash in a slow motion replay.

The "Campaign" itself is made up of 'Acts', and 'Chapters' that coincide with events in WWII history. As you complete a chapter within an act you will advance to the next chapter in a progressive order. Once all of the chapters within an Act are complete you will move onto the next act, and set of chapters within the game. Campaign has the standard difficulty settings (Easy, Normal, Hard). How hard it is to complete your playthrough will greatly depend on which difficulty setting you choose to play on. You'll find that each chapter you complete in 'Campaign' has up to five gold stars that can be earned depending on your performance. Whether, or not you completed all of the objectives (Primary, Secondary) is also factored into your final ranking. Every chapter within the game has a set of primary objectives that must be completed in order to advance, and secondary objectives that aren't as necessary. The secondary objectives will earn you more stars if you complete them along with the primary objectives. Taking on both objective types is not always an easy task though.

Aside from 'Campaign', Dogfight 1942 also has an offline/online co-op mode, and two additional online modes that add significant replay value to the game. Offline, or local co-op will have you and a friend teaming up to take down the enemy pilots within the various locales of the game that you have unlocked via 'Campaign'. Online co-op on the other hand plays exactly the same, but will have you paired up with an online gamer via Xbox Live. In addition to the co-op modes you also have an online 'Quick Play' mode that will pit you, and a team of AI pilots against another online gamer and his/her team of AI pilots. The mode tallies up AI kills, and player kills in order to determine who wins each match.

The final available mode of play in multiplayer is called 'Survival'. Survival could best be summed up as a shmup (shoot'em up) game mode. In this particular mode you will fight wave after wave of enemy pilots with a limited amount of life. Killing planes will score you points as it does with any other multiplayer mode. When you finally get killed your final score will be uploaded to the game's leaderboard ranking you with other XBL gamers. In 'Survival' you'll also regain life after completing each wave which helps you last for the long haul. Completing a wave in 'Survival' only requires that you kill all enemy pilots/planes within that wave.

There are unlockable features that can be earned as you do your playthrough of the game's 'Campaign'. Each chapter you playthrough in the 'Campaign' will unlock the plane associated with the chapter along with it's different paint styles for use in the multiplayer modes. Aside from this you can also earn XBL achievements to add to your overall gamerscore. Another thing I should mention is that this game will have DLC for those who are interested in adding planes, and extra 'Campaign' content to their core game. In fact a piece of DLC has already been released on the XBL marketplace. The newly available DLC includes Russian related acts/chapters, and planes.

In the end Dogfight 1942 is a game with several different pros, and cons. On the "Pro" side of things the game looks gorgeous, and features retail game worthy graphics. The various locations in the game are brought to life with vivid semi-realistic skies, waters, and land features that make the battle experience even more realistic. The cutscenes, and slow motion killcam views add a gritty edge to the intense battles making the game more engaging. When it comes to the "Cons" though they can be quite disheartening . The AI for example doesn't pose much of a realistic challenge for players. Often times it seems that the AI planes could care less about what you are trying to accomplish.

The emphasis on the racial oriented name calling, and cussing during the first few chapters of the game is also a concern of mine. I can understand City Interactive wanting to stay true to the actual events, but the extreme, and repetitive emphasis placed on each phrase was really uncalled for. If you had to repeat the chapters for any reason you would get to hear the slang terms even more which is definitely not a plus. In conclusion, considering all that I experienced in the game I'd have to say that it's not worth 1200 msp. If it were 800 msp I might possibly say go for it. The "Cons" are too much to warrant such a price though.