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				Graphics: 6.5 Gameplay: 6.0 Sound: 5.0 Control: 4.0 Replay Value: 5.0 Live play: 5.0 Rating: 5.0 Publisher:  Ubisoft Developer:  Taito Number Of Players:  1 (1-8) Online Screenshots
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  Ubisoft and Taito present Over G Fighters (released earlier this year as World Airforce in Japan), a dog of a combat flight sim that’ll have you reaching for the No-Doz and the Rolaids at the same time.

  In OGF, you are a rookie pilot for the Energy Air Force, an apparently civilian air combat unit that fights foreign powers, probably under a no-bid Pentagon contract. Dick Cheney may be a major shareholder or former CEO.

  Your flyboy alter-ego has unlockable access to more than 20 of the world’s most advanced fighter jets, and you can use them to fly missions offline in a story-based “scenario” mode or player-configurable “challenge” mode, or online against other fighter pilots.

  Where’s the speed?

  Those of us who got a steady diet of movies like Top Gun and Iron Eagle in the 80s have certain expectations of a game that involves flying in jets. Those expectations might include speed and maneuverability, both of which are sadly lacking in OGF. The generally sluggish feel of the controls hinders the experience as well. It may be that I’ve simply gotten too accustomed to more arcade-y combat flight games like Crimson Skies, and it’s unfair to expect the same experience from a game that appears to strive more for realism. But it’s not too much to ask that a game be at least a little bit fun.

  Missions consist mostly of tedious sorties in which you’ll shoot down other planes and try to avoid their missiles. Enemy aircraft appear on your in-cockpit radar and then on your heads-up display, surrounded by a box. Once the HUD says “shoot,” you’re locked on and can fire, usually bringing down the bandit. Then it’s time to lock onto the next one. Yawn. OGF attempts to mix things up by giving you ground targets from time to time, but it’s the same song, different verse.

  On those occasions when an enemy plane locks onto you and fires a missile, you have very little control over the outcome. Your plane releases chaff automatically to try to misdirect the incoming ordnance, but evasive maneuvers are usually necessary as well. It’s during these times that you’re truly at the mercy of the sluggishness of your aircraft.

  The first several missions are dull but easy, but then suddenly OGF ramps up the difficulty, not by making the game more fast-paced but simply by throwing more bandits at you and giving you ground targets that are heavily defended. Thus OGF accomplishes the rare feat of simultaneously boring you and driving up your blood pressure.

  Your wingman, if chosen carefully and matched well with his or her favorite plane, offers some assistance, especially given that he is invulnerable and carries infinite ammo and fuel. The back button allows you to issue general commands to the wingman to attack air or ground targets or to fall back into formation.

  When your mission ends, you’re not immediately given the option to simply move to the next mission. Instead, you’re taken immediately to a replay, which you must either watch or cancel (and watching your mission might be the only thing more boring than playing it). Once you cancel the replay, you can either “End Game” or retry the mission. Selecting “End Game” doesn’t shut OGF down like one might hope; it just takes you to the menu to allow you to choose a new mission in your current theater.

  Perhaps the most fun aspect of the game is also the sim-miest – practicing regular and carrier landings. Because some missions require you to land your bird for fuel, repairs and ammo, it pays to know how to land safely (although you have the option to land automatically by pressing down on the D-pad). The carrier landing is especially harrowing and difficult; I finally shot my first successful one on about the 20th try. Radio transmissions help you line up, and just as in real life, you’re asked to “call the ball” to indicate you have the carrier’s visual navigational aids in sight. Coming in a little too steep means the difference between grabbing the wire with your tailhook or taxiing right off the edge of the carrier to your watery death.

  As a Japanese import, the game is riddled with that sense that things are a little lost in translation. For example, you start the game with a rank of “greenhorn,” but with skill and a little bit of luck, you’ll level up and be honored with the rank of “stupidity.” An unintentionally hilarious error like that would have been easy to fix but instead just adds to the overall cheesiness of the title.

  Nonsensical controls

  While most games would naturally map the firing functions to the right trigger, OGF makes the “A” button the fire button, and the right trigger is used to cycle through the commands you issue to your wingman. The other face buttons choose weapons. The shoulder buttons accelerate and decelerate (a function that would have been better mapped to the triggers, since they’re not being used to fire weapons).

  Bad controller layout hinders gameplay. For example, in the missions that require you to take off from an airfield or carrier, your left thumb is occupied with using the analog stick to gain altitude and control direction. Unfortunately, you also need that thumb to hit the D-pad to raise your landing gear so that you can use your weapons. I finally got in the habit of reaching over with my right thumb to work the landing gear and the tailhook so that I wouldn’t lose control of the plane.

  You can choose between the “arcade” and “realistic” control setup. The “realistic” option allows you to use the triggers to control your rudder, which make your plane a little more maneuverable and nimble in combat.

  Sound

  The sound design in OGF is nothing special. Aircraft and weapons sound reasonably realistic, but that is more than offset by the ridiculously amateurish voice acting. It seems that Taito had Japanese voice actors saying some lines phonetically, and your Russian wingman sounds like Count Chocula. I learned early on never to pick Linda as my wingman because of her annoying line readings.

  Cockpit alarms are meant to make the game more realistic, but the computerized female voice that repeats “Over G. Over G. Over G.” every time I try to evade a missile gets old in a hurry.

  It’s clear from the 80’s screaming guitar soundtrack that Taito was striving for the excitement of Top Gun, but I believe I had more fun standing in the Top Gun popcorn line than I’ve had playing this game.

  Graphics: a mixed bag

  For the most part, OGF has mediocre graphics on display. Menus look cheap. Missions are introduced with static, hand-drawn characters, giving the game the feel of a bad comic book.

  Ground textures are also lacking, although some lack of detail can be forgiven given the altitudes from which you’re often viewing the ground.

  OGF makes up for the less than inspiring textures and menus with aircraft, runways and carriers that are lovingly and realistically rendered. There were times during missions when I got a view of my plane from the outside, and it looked almost like a high-res military video, right down to the blurry wake of my afterburners. Cut scenes also are impressive-looking, showing ground crew members rushing realistically about on the deck of my carrier. It’s a shame the nerdy dedication that went into the rendering of the military assets didn’t carry over to the rest of the game.

  While flying, you have a variety of views from which to choose – two in the cockpit, one head-on view without the cockpit and an outside view of your plane that allows you to pan around. That latter view isn’t terribly useful, because you lose your HUD in that view, making the plane harder to fly straight and level (assuming you haven’t decided to crash it on purpose just to make things a bit more interesting).

  OGF Live play: Just as boring with real people

  OGF offers multiplayer over Xbox Live, but players shouldn’t expect it to rescue the game from its mediocrity. A recent Live game I joined involved four competing pilots whose goal was to get the most kills in the time allotted – in this case, an hour. Players had access to air bases, where they could land to refuel, and downed fighters respawned on their own bases and took off again.

  Unfortunately, the tedious “find an enemy, lock on, shoot” formula was on full display here as well, and it was compounded by the huge size of the combat area and the length of time it took us to find our opponents.

  The bottom line

  While flying combat missions in a modern fighter jet might seem like the basis for some pretty compelling gaming, OGF is instead a snooze-worthy, slow-paced flight sim that only the Jane’s Defence Weekly crowd could love. They’ll be in nerd heaven.

8/7/2006  Tracey 'Jerri Blank' McCartney