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Intro Keep the peace as a NATO soldier of the future. Your skills in the air and on land will be tested as you’ll need to make surprise attacks on hangars and also pick up downed squads in transports. This latest release from BAM! has gamers trudging through numerous faults in search of the solid game within. Gameplay: 6.5/10 Dropship does what few games can: it is enjoyable while being infuriating. Dropship just doesn’t stop there however, as it toys with the gamer, relentlessly taunting them with their failure and inability to finish a level – which requires the player to do five things at once. The notion of handling air and sea combat is tantalizing, and worse yet, the game manages to pull both off very well every now and then, which only makes the rest of the experience that much more painful. As a dropship pilot for the United Peace Force, you’ll be called to bomb hangers, make escort runs, and drop off various squads behind enemy lines. As a UPF soldier, you’ll also be called to test your driving abilities as you’ll get to make quick retreats, rescue downed soldiers, and even get to man the turret. It seems as though the world just can’t be at peace and the overflow of drug money, government corruption, and sovereignty will call you to all parts of the world. By having the 20 missions broken up into four campaigns (North Africa, Columbia, Kazakhstan, and China), the objects will vary well enough to make each new mission interesting. That is one thing that Dropship does very well: the missions are all fairly entertaining, but more importantly, they are laid out fantastically. Early on, before it really shoots high up on the frustration factor, you will need to drop off and pick up some recon squads. All goes well until your wingman says that his plane is messing up, so off you go to pick up his squad too. While you rush back and forth from base, a call comes in to pick up your initial payload, but when getting them, the plane is hit and an evac via the squad’s ATV is issued. Driving through enemy territory, handbrakes are slammed, head-on collisions are barely missed, and a mini game of Wreckless is being played; all this is being done without defenses. Once the gun turret is back up, the game switches to an Incoming type mode with a target screen as a computer controlled driver goes through the map, and it’s up to you to fend them off. Quite a few levels are multi-tiered like this and doing some of the mundane tasks actually helps the game to play out as if there’s a massive war effort going on where even the boring tasks are things that need to be done. The problem with this is that saving can only be done after a mission; there is nothing quite like going through 15 minutes of a mission and then being ambushed and fending off waves of ground assaults when a few lucky rockets slam into your wing, not only destroying your ship, but forcing a restart of all the smaller – or bigger – tasks that were done beforehand. With some of the missions getting up there in the 30 minute range, this can be very, very annoying. That seems to be a theme here: there is always some give and take. Is that ATV fun to drive? Of course it is! But you’ll just have to navigate through dense forests that also happen to block the view, and without being able to adjust the camera angle accordingly, get stuck in-between two trees while enemies pound away and soon, the controller gets pounded on in frustration. Cool! A tank! Yes, now my lifelong dream of bringing hell to all those who oppose me is at hand! Oops! The convoy sped away and got destroyed before I could reach them in time. Wow! I can control other craft! However, it’s not very intuitive and they are about as bright as the normal wingmen – which is to say that they are not very bright at all. The variety of missions and vehicles is certainly a plus, as the bulky beached-whale-esque dropship makes way to sleeker and meaner transport fighters, ATVs give way to tanks and a solo career leads to a commandeering of other soldiers, but each requires its own sacrifice in terms of playability and functionality. The iffy controls show their faults quite clearly once combat heats up, and when more men go under your command, they never really allow the player to master them, but simply nudge them on the right track. There are also some serious design issues. The arrows indicating where to go are extremely small and seem to vanish right when they are needed, no one gives you direct clues as to who they are when they call for backup, headquarters wants you to not only destroy the nine installations on the ground, but also protect the other planes and shoot down the 12 enemy fighter pilots as well, etc. In short, there is confusion compounded by small, vanishing arrows, inability to split one’s self into three different replicas and play the game as such, confusing minimap, and infuriating wingmen and soldiers who are constantly harping on you but can’t seem to fight their way out of a freaking paper bag, and no mid-level saves. Ah, yes, there are problems a-plenty here. As you can see, the positive points of Dropship can become easily overshadowed by all of the faults. The game’s difficulty will no doubt turn many players off as it isn’t so much of a challenge – where there’s a smart enemy and it requires brains and quick reflexes – as it’s the more pointless ‘put the gamer in the middle of war and have them do four things at once’ difficulty. I refuse to say that this game has a learning curve or anything of the sort because that would imply that the gamer could somehow perfect all of its mannerisms and it just isn’t possible here. Sure, you can beat the game and survive life without your hair and fingernails due to fits of rage, but there will always be times when a design flaw will creep in and either destroys you when you don’t perform the missions absolutely perfectly, or the controls decide that it’s time for you to run into a mountain. There is no doubt in my mind that there is a solid game here; the pacing is excellent, the stories are entertaining, the different vehicles are fun to use, and the way the game is played out is exceptional; but it requires a great deal of leniency on the gamer’s part.
Graphics: 7/10 Sound:
6/10 Control:
5.5/10 Overall:
6.5/10 [ top ] | |||
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