In recent years, as those who survived grow sadly fewer in number, World War Two has become increasingly romanticised, and none more so than the idea of serving in the RAF. An era of bushy moustaches, dogfighting that required skill, rather than "fire and forget", and that "Tally ho, pip pip!" attitude, there's little nothing quite like putting on your best Basil Fawlty accent, stepping into a virtual Spitfire, flying helmet perched on your head, ready to "give those krauts a bloody good thrashing". And that's exactly what new downloadable game, Dogfight 1942 allows you to do.
Set across pretty much the entire globe during World War Two, and, brilliantly, playable in full split-screen co-op, Dogfight 1942's two campaigns let you and a friend take in the sights of the world - from the choppy tides of Midway, and a revenge attack on the Japanese fleet, to the deserts of North Africa, and more familiar skies over Dover, Kent, and London. With over 40 planes on offer, from the common (Spitfires, Hurricanes, Messerschmitts), to the rarer (a Gloster Meteor and a Typhoon), there's a decent selection of planes to choose from - although as most are locked to begin with, you'll have to play through the campaigns if you want to unlock them all.
Unlike the stereotypical intimidating "simulator", though, Dogfight 1942's been designed from the ground up to be easy for players to get the hang of. A concise tutorial takes you through the basics, while an adjustable difficulty level lets you choose a style that suits you. On the hardest, you're alone with few aids, as you glide through the skies - although you don't appear to be able to stall, and it's certainly a long way from the realism of Birds of Steel - but on Easy, things are a lot, lot simpler. With a number of assists to help beginner pilots, including auto-levelling of your plane, throttle that automatically scales to help you stay behind your target, and a sort of emergency-autopilot that yanks the controls away from you if you're about to crash into the ground, the developers have gone to great lengths to make Dogfight 1942 easy(er) to fly than any game that's come before it - but there's somewhat mixed results.
This is no way to play a flight sim.
Initially starting you flying from a rather awkward, incredibly zoomed out view, with your plane taking up next to no space whatsoever at the bottom of the screen, Dogfight can feel a little bit erratic at first. From this perspective, even small nudges of the analogue stick are enough to send your plane wheeling though the sky doing barrel rolls, as it feels incredibly over sensitive - and a long way away from being an accessible control scheme. By pressing the Back button (on the Xbox 360), however, you can switch to a more sensible view, bringing the camera in closer, which also, oddly, seems to rein in the controls a little bit. Making it a lot easier to fly, changing the view is the first thing you'll want to do.
But perhaps the biggest pull here, even above and beyond the accessibility that's been built into the game, is the full split-screen co-op support for the campaign. Letting you and a friend play through each of the missions together, this is something of a rarity for flight sims (sadly) - but it works so well here, we can't honestly see why. With another player to cover your back, or help out with the trickier parts, and the ability to heal each other by - inexplicably - shooting at each other's planes, playing in co-op makes the game simultaneously easier, and a lot more fun. Not that it isn't without its oddities. While the game doesn't shy away from the key parts of flying, even in co-op - there's takeoffs, landings, and carrier landings - it does, however, make you both use the same runway, or worse, the same aircraft carrier deck. Creating some spectacular near misses (or worse, crashes), having to share the same carrier is as hilarious as it is nonsensical, as you touch down, and come to a stop half way down the runway, leaving you either to attempt to taxi out of the way (without going over the edge), or watch as your friend comes into land, wheels clipping your cockpit as go, before touching down in front of you, and promptly falling into the sea.
The missions themselves have a decent amount of variety too, with torpedo runs on aircraft carriers, bomber interceptions, submarine strafing, and even a mission that has you attempting to chase down, and blow up V1 flying bombs before they can hit London. With arrows showing you where your torpedo will go, where your bombs will hit, and even where to aim to ensure your bullets hit the plane you're targeting, there's plenty of assists to make things easier for newcomers here too - although it is more than a little bit tricky to tell if your torpedoes actually hit. A points system, meanwhile, adds an extra incentive for doing well - string together kills in quick succession, and you'll earn ever larger multipliers, bringing rewards for the most talented pilots.
You'll be defending Dover, London, and the "Vickers factory" from attack. Historical accuracy too!
But for all it does so well, there's one main problem with Dogfight 1942 - and that's because it's all over a little bit too quickly. While the game may brag about providing a "full boxed product experience", what it sadly fails to provide is the equivalent length. With around five hour's worth of co-op gameplay here, it's not overly short, but when all was said and done, we were still left desperate for more. The few other co-op modes that round out the package - a survival mode against waves of enemies, and a dogfight mode sadly don't quite manage to fill the hole in the same way a third campaign would have done. Luckily, there are a few things to go back for, as you can improve your score (you're awarded a rating out of five stars at the end of each mission), and complete specific sub-objectives for each mission, from the basic (complete the mission again and improve your score) to the more extreme (shoot a plane down whilst flying upside down) - but sadly, when playing in co-op, it's not possible to unlock any of the sub-objectives. And while you'd imagine that unlocking the sub-objectives would in turn unlock new planes, or camouflage and customisation options, there's surprisingly nothing to tell you when you've unlocked something, or how far you are away from unlocking the next.
With a strong focus on co-op play, an accessible control scheme, a decent variety of planes, hugely different missions, and above all else, a large dose of fun, Dogfight 1942 is a blast. While it's sadly lacking some of the authenticity of Birds of Steel, and we'd have liked to have seen a cockpit view, or at the very least, a mission where you all man the turrets on a bomber, Dogfight 1942 accomplishes exactly what it set out to deliver - it's easy to pick up and play, it's action packed, and it's a heck of a lot of fun.
UPDATE: Shortly after writing this review, an extra, downloadable campaign entitled Russia Under Siege appeared on the Xbox Live Marketplace, priced at 800 points. Although it adds some much needed missions to the game, judging by the proximity of its release to the full game, this is an "expansion" which really should have been included to begin with, especially for the money that they were asking - as such, the score has been adjusted to suit.
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
