Snoopy Flying Ace looks great for an XBLA game. The maps may be fairly small, but they all have a distinctive style, and have been well designed for tight, competitive multiplayer. The planes have also been designed really well, with a nice variety of old-school biplanes loaded with some hilariously oversized weaponry. Snoopy is clearly a far superior game to most other XBLA titles, right from the professional looking menus and interface right down to the texture work.

 

 

Sound is also much better quality than your average XBLA game. Whilst the music loops quite quickly, which is annoying, the cutesy war themes in the background are at least of good quality and relatively memorable, whilst the sound effects are also pretty decent. There is no speech though unfortunately, which is a bit of a shame, although obviously Snoopy is not a franchise associated with any voice acting.

 

 

 

Multiplayer is definitely the best part of the game. Not only can you play against bots, and play splitscreen, but the game supports 16 players over Xbox Live, and you can join games in progress. It’s not the most massively popular game out there, but there is normally at least 1 game online at any time with 6-10 players. The game can take a little while to load, but once you are in, the game seemed pretty lag free. It’s a shame your star total only counts when playing online, but this is a minor gripe as multiplayer is obviously a very welcome addition to the game.

 

 

"Snoopy Flying Ace" is a surprise hit. The gameplay is good, and it has some of the best multiplayer on XBLA. There are a few issues with difficulty and achievements, but this is one title that is definitely worth a purchase for all budding Top Guns out there.

 

 

 

 

 

+ Visuals
+ Online multiplayer
+ Weapon choice