Totally Games Spill WWII Flight Secrets

Thanks to GameDaily for their feature talking to Totally Games' founder, Lawrence Holland, and profiling the "just-completed Secret Weapons Over Normandy", the arcade-style WWII flight game currently "...available for the PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox." 1UP has a review of the Xbox version explaining clearly: "Once upon a time... a clever man named Larry Holland created a series of World War II flight sims that redefined the entire genre. The three games - Battlehawks 1942, Their Finest Hour, and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe - mixed exhaustive historical accuracy with a fast-paced, arcadey play mechanic." The reviewer pegs SWON as "closer to Namco's Ace Combat series in style", but still a fitting console-styled legacy for those earlier classics, and Gaming Age also approve, rating the game "a long-lived, rewarding experience."

Comments

Key Quote:

[Txiasaeia]

"... mixed exhaustive historical accuracy with a fast-paced, arcadey play mechanic..."

I think the key quote here is "arcadey play mechanic." This game plays like X-Wing Alliance with WWII fighters! The only "historical accuracy" I've found is the fact that the planes look somewhat like their real-life counterparts.

I know that the arcade flight sim genre is somewhat nonexistent on the PC, but for a flight sim enthusiast, this game is pretty much useless. If I want to be able to pull 9 G's in a flight sim, I'll load up Privateer or Independence War; if I want a "real" sim, well, Sturmovik's been out for a while, and from what I hear Lock On is supposed to be pretty good.