Strike Fighters: Top Gun in the palm of your hands!
Over the last three decades flight simulator games have improved in leaps and
bounds. There are so many variants now that even Wikipedia lists separate
categories for combat flight sims, general flight sims and space simulators. So
now that we’ve got such powerful phones in our pockets it’s no surprise that we
would eventually have fully decked out combat sims. Read on to hear about the
ace product made by the developers at Third Wire Productions.
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| Top games android: Strike Fighters |
Gameplay: You pick a fighter plane, jump straight into the
war zone and then try to obliterate everything on the radar. It sounds pretty
straightforward because it is… it’s so geared up towards this instant action
that there isn’t even much of an explanation. The menu screen is just your
plane selection and then you’re thrown straight into the deep end.
The control of the plane is through your accelerometer: so tilt left and
right to roll the plane and tilt up and down to pull the nose of the plane up
and down. Although this accelerometer-joystick is hard to grasp initially, the
controls are fairly easy to understand (… as long as you’ve played a flight sim
before!). If you touch the on screen button on the right hand side then you’ll
start firing bullets directly in front of you. There’s also a throttle
controller on the left hand side.
At this point, the seasoned fighter pilots out there are probably thinking…
what about the Head Up Display (HUD)?… Without this HUD then shooting the enemy
is like some mysterious sixth sense ability… it’s next to impossible. But fear
not… this is only a game, so this isn’t uber realistic. A guidance cross hair
will project where the plane will be and if you fire near this little red circle
then you’ll blast the enemy to smithereens.
Campaign: The game starts out in the Cold War in 1954.
Then the game will advance one year for every 5 kills. Every time you advance a
year, you earn 1 unlock key which you can use to unlock newer aircraft. If you
get promoted then you’ll be rewarded with more keys. The level promotion is
based off the total accumulated score and not limited to years – so kill more
enemies within the rounds to unlock more planes. Your starting planes will only
have machine guns, but if you invest the time in the game then you’ll eventually
be able to get auto lock-on missiles!
Room for improvement: Personally I find the accelerometer-joystick control
method quite flawed. The point of the joystick is that you’re meant to be able
to pull off aerial techniques (like barrel rolls) easier. They’re already quite
hard to execute because of the spinning element involved but to then compound
the difficulty with a weird phone/view orientation makes almost impossible to
pull off. Of course these fancy flying methods aren’t absolutely necessary, but
the purist would argue they’re critical in dogfights. The result is that you’ll
find you start your movement in a very distinct way so you only roll or only
pitch up/down. It would be nice to have the option of onscreen controls.
Rating: 4/5 Another Unity engine success where the gameplay is as stunningly
good as the graphics. The core game is top notch and easy to understand instant
action. Hopefully Third Wire Productions will continue to release updates which
improve the controls and expand the gameplay.
Strike Fighters Tips from Android Games Review
Some unexplained features:
The tile sensor will automatically center every time you play. But the
button at the top center of the screen is also for manual re-centering during
mid-game flight.
The fastest manoeuvre is to pull up or dive. So the fastest
way to turn is to first rotate the plane ninety degrees so that you’ll dive up
or down in the horizontal plane. (This might be obvious to some people, but not
everyone.)
You don’t always have to shoot directly over the projected red circle flight
path. If the enemy is close then you just have to shoot around the enemy. This
is particularly the case if you and the enemy are flying at each other.
The
planes do have different handling characteristics – if you want to understand
them then focus on the rate of pulling up or diving or the rolling. Once you
find the plane you’re comfortable with then try specialising in it. Don’t just
use your unlock keys unnecessarily.
Developers: Third Wire Productions
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