User:SPARTAN 119/SPARTAN 119 Reviews: Heroes Over Europe

=Heroes Over Europe=

Storyline
Heroes over Europe is a WWII combat flight simulator that follows three pilots in the European Theater of the Second World War, a Brit, an American, and a New Zealander. The game consists several missions during the pivotal battles of World War II, including the Battle of Britain, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Battle of the Bulge, and the massive bombing raids on Berlin. The storyline, however, has a few historical inaccuracies. For instance, in one mission, the player must fly a British Swordfish torpedo plane (you can also use the Beaufighter once you've unlocked it), and sink the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser | Prinz Eugen. In real life, the Scharnhorst was sunk at the Battle of North Cape by the British battleship Duke of York, the Gneisenau was scuttled in 1945 in an attempt to block a harbor in Sweden, and the Prinz Eugen survived the war to be destroyed in a U.S. atomic bomb test in 1946. Also, during the Battle of the Bulge, there was thick fog over the Ardennes for much of the battle, making aerial operations impossible.

Gameplay Mechanics (7/10): Smooth Flying, Laws of Physics Optional
There are no real issues with control scheme or any of the other gameplay mechanics. Overall the game has a very "arcade" feel, but it is not exactly the most realistic simulation of flying a WWII-era fighter out there. For instance, I'm pretty sure they didn't have infinite fuel and ammo, and regenerating bombs and rockets during World War II (or today, for that matter)! I also get the feeling real fighter pilots can't slow down time and make the weak points of an enemy aircraft glow yellow. Finally, like a car insurance policy, fighters in Heroes over Europe seem to come with "accident forgiveness", as you can often survive a midair collision, sometimes even TWO midair collisions and keep flying. However, the only one of the "arcade" features that really annoyed me is the lack of a "cockpit view" mode i.e. you can fly the plane from the pilots' point of view in Heroes, as you can in most other comparable flight simulators, including IL-2 Sturmovik: Bird of Prey and Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. This leaves you with only one viewing option, a third person "behind the tail" view, as though you are piloting the aircraft by remote control from a chase plane!

Difficulty Curve: (4/10): Lulls You Into a False Sense of Security
Normally, I would address this in the gameplay section, but this feature pissed me off so much, I feel I have to put it in it's own section. For most of the early missions, it is relatively smooth flying, but around the middle of the game, your sent into Berlin in the middle of a military parade to perform a lightning raid. It starts out simple enough, blow up a radar site, bomb a few Panzers, shoot down a few planes, but then, the shit really hits the fan. The Germans start throwing up flak over the entire city and you have to escape by flying low between buildings. Now at this point I was still thinking "O.K., fair enough". But then a squadron of, Messerschmitts dive in from above and start shooting at me. I try and go up and kill the bastards, but the sky is still blanketed with flak, and I get blown out of the sky. And that is where I'm like "WHAT THE FUCK!!!? The entire fucking sky is filled with flak, even near the GERMAN aircraft! How the hell are those ME-109s not getting hit by friendly fire!? Did someone forget to tell me the Nazis invented a magical friendly fire-blocking shield!? Now I either stay low and get cut to pieces by the 109s, or go up high and get blown to bits by the flak! Thats when I was like "Alright you Nazi Bastards, IT'S ON, BITCHES! If you wanna cheat, two can play at this game!" So I went to cheatcc.com and looked up the cheat codes. Some would call this giving in, and normally I wouldn't do this, but if the enemy AI cheats, I believe you have every right to cheat right back!