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Strap on those flying goggles and get that Xbox paddle out to play a comic flying game from Midway. Now don’t get me wrong I try to give all games a fair hearing when it comes to the XBOX, but I must admit I have never been a real big fan of racing games so forgive me if I sound a bit downhearted when it comes to this game. First, let's get a word from the game's manufacturer...
Never before has there been such a vibrant and interactive animated flying video game until Freaky Flyers: the first and only fast and furious fully open 3D airplane racing adventure that drops you into the cockpits of the most unique and engaging cast of characters to ever explore adventure and dogfight in the video game skies....
Ok if you're like me, your probably sat at this point going AND??? What else does it do, will it make my coffee while I am asleep for when I wake up from a real good drinking binge the night before? Well actually it doesn’t, so if you wanted it you’re going to be very disappointed. Ok, I am forced to review this one, so let’s fire this bad boy up and see what we come up with.
Midway has filled my childhood with loving memories of such games as Mortal Kombat and some mean looking arcade games from my pre-pubescent days. Fortunately for them they have spent some time on this game, but only if I was looking through the eyes of ten year old. Letting some of the intros play through at the beginning was a good idea, and some of them even gave me a chuckle here and there. Nicely rendered intros for some of the characters in the game, such Cactus Rose, who spent her youth as the leader of an all Mexican biker gang who terrorized the bar and discothèque scene of the California coast, or Traci Torpedo - s a German clone with 100 sisters, a world class ace shooting down 1012 other planes. With 13 characters in total there is a wide variety of characters to go through, and will give the kids a nice boost when boredom sets in. You start with only the choice of 5 characters - I personally recommend checking them all out, as I said before they do give the odd chuckle, and you really don’t want to skip past them if you want to make the best of this game.
Adventure Racing is eight tracks / locations, which as promised are pretty much fully explorable, and if you roam around a little you might find some neat little power ups, such as speed boosts and weapon upgrades. The objective is beating the opposition out of the skies. winning the race and progressing to next round. I must admit - firing up the first level I was very surprised with the look; the levels are amazingly large and very well rendered, but I have to say I was fully overwhelmed by how much was going on the screen at one time. They certainly did pack the levels with loads to do and loads to look out for, like traps, shortcuts or just power ups. The first level is Canada with such sub goals as re-uniting a yeti with his mother, shooting a log jam or just shooting down half eaten trees, making it almost impossible to find time to collect the powerups inside 3 laps. The racing element of the game is just wooooofully to easy for a grownup, and even offered very little challenge or entertainment to my ten year old son: all he wanted was to go back to the beginning and watch the cartoons again, so replayability for this game might be a problem, even for the youngest of players. I have to say though, the controls are nice and simple. It's amazing how much you are darting left, right, up and down, getting yourself all in a twizz trying to achieve goals. Finding another thing that is slightly annoying, is that you're not allowed to hold the button down for non stop shooting; you getting one of the other characters in your sights is hard enough but possible, but when you have to take your fingers off the button to reload, it tends to grind you down a little.
Conclusion:
This game tries to be so much, yet it doesn't really achieve anything. On one hand it makes a nice distraction from other games that you really like playing, but it would never make my top 10. Like I said before, racing games have never really rung my bell, although I do like flying games – but this game just wasn't for me. I'd suggest to buy this game if you need something for under 10’s, or if you just want to waste some hard earned bucks on a mindless fun game that you will play occasionally. Don’t get me wrong - it’s designed very well and has that final glossing that all games should have, but it’s like a metallic paint and wax job on a Lada car - it will never be anything you would like your mates to see you drive.
