Geryk Pre-Analysis: Down in Flames
Brooski - Columns - Comments - 06/20/05
Planes with better performance keep more cards in their hand, so they can do more stuff. Planes with better acceleration get to replenish used cards faster, because they can regain lost airspeed. Planes with more guns get to use more of the shooting cards. It’s all so elegant that it’s just completely crazy. And you don’t have to know thing one about how to trim your ailerons, or whatever Tom Chick does in his spare time.
When you play, you immediately get a feel for all those things you read about in the back of the European Air War manual. Fragile planes like the Zero can dance around nicely, but if they get on the wrong end of a couple good bursts, they’re toast. You may not know what a Thunderbolt’s flight model feels like, but not having your hand limit reduced at High altitude (due to your Turbocharger) instantly makes you appreciate what pilots must have liked about that aircraft. And that it can take a lot of damage. And dish it out. Frankly, it’s kind of a superplane. I love it.
The way the solo games works is that you create pilot/wingman teams, and then start out with the most basic fighter plane for that nationality. As you gain experience, you unlock better and better aircraft, presumably as you progress through the war and new planes show up. There are a couple of catches, though. First, you can’t just fly one pilot every time, because even in the solo game, your pilots accumulate fatigue. If they get damaged or shot down, they accumulate a lot more fatigue. You’ll probably end up with a four-team rotation. That’s kind of neat because you’ll have a favorite pilot, but he’ll get shot up and have to sit out for a while, and in the meantime one of your other pilots that you hardly noticed before starts to go on a tear, and you’re all like, you go man.
Second, this is a war, and people get killed. People like your pilots. If a pilot gets shot down, there is a chance he will be killed. Forever. This adds a lot of tension to the game – it’s kind of like playing Temple of Elemental Evil on the Ironman setting. If your pilot buys the farm, his wingman becomes the new leader and you have to create a new (rookie) wingman. Before I realized this, I was naming all my wingmen “Wingman Jones” and “Wingman Frank” and whatnot. Now a couple of those guys are leaders, which probably causes some confusion at parties. Sometimes one of your long-serving wingmen gets killed, and you have to create a new one. I’m sure that’s kind of sad for the leader.
The game is a bit like an RPG in that you can buy skills for your pilots, which can be either temporary (extra cards to start, ability to draw an extra card) or permanent (abilities like Natural Pilot, Aggressive, etc. which increase their performance). I guess you could say they get better Dexterity. Charisma stays the same, though.
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