Written by: Ian

 

 

 

Using, bizarrely, the snoopy license, this flying game is all about online multiplayer- but is it more than the sum of its parts?

 

 

There’s a little bit of story to "Snoopy Flying Ace", but not a whole lot. Like with many games with bots, the story levels are mainly filled with respawning bots, which makes a deep story difficult. There is a kind of second-world war theme to the artwork, but that’s more a stylistic than plot device.

 

Also, the sporadic, arena based combat has different elements depending on your difficulty- making everything confusing and convoluted if you change the difficulty between missions.

 

 

Snoopy Flying Ace is a multiplayer focused, arcade flying game. The controls as simple and intuitive, with a fairly standard system, with boost, airbrakes, and stunts controlled from the right stick. The controls are really tight, and you always feel like you’re in control.

 

 

The single player levels are a bit of a mish-mash though, with various races and deathmatches that aren’t a huge amount of fun, and getting any achievements from them is really, really tough unfortunately, although if you do like that kind of thing, there is a good selection of missions to play through.

 

The actual combat, at least, is excellent. You get a primary machine gun, and then a choice of several secondary weapons, of which you can fit two to your plane, and use one at a time. Each map also has a few turrets that you can use as well. The general system is pretty satisfying, and combat has enough different planes and weapons to add a little bit of a tactical edge, whilst the stunts not only look nice, but help you escape some of those more powerful weapons too. It’s an easy game to pick up, but more difficult to master- even in my first online game I felt right at home, but at the same time realising that there was much more to learn.

 

 

Whilst the single player might not really be worth it, the multiplayer options (if people continue to play online) will offer a decent amount of fun for an XBLA game.