Heroes Over Europe (PS3) Review

Posted by Jon Seddon on 12.04.2009

Ubisoft's flight combat game brings an arcade combat experience to PS3 and Xbox 360

Title: Heroes Over Europe
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Transmission Games
Genre: Flight Sim
Players: 1-16
Rated: T for Teen

Heroes Over Europe is the sequel to Heroes of the Pacific, which was released in 2005 for PS2, Xbox and PC. The titles gives away the geographic setting for these Second World War flight combat games. Both games were developed by Transmission Games and unfortunately Heroes Over Europe proved to be the their last game, with the studio closing up shop just after the game shipped.



Gameplay
The game puts you in the flight suit of three different pilots: an American pretending to be a Canadian so that he can join the war in the RAF, a working classEnglish guy and a New Zealander who has come to Britain to fly Mosquitos for the mother country. The game's campaigns follow some of the key events of the war including the Battle of Britain, the Blitz and the Battle of the Bulge, but onoccasions the script steers away from real events.



After playing IL-2 earlier this year, the controls of Heroes can seem overly simplistic with essentially all the flight controls on the left stick with the right stick handling just throttle, which makes the planes handle like X-wings in the Rogue Squadron games on the Gamecube. Professional mode does allow for a more realistic flight model giving you back a separate yaw control, but it never feels as good as IL-2. In the end, the game seems designed to be played in arcade mode and once you get used to the completely unrealistic flight model, you can forget it and just get on with shooting down Jerry. Clicking R3 gives you a temporary throttle boost whilst triangle gives you a zoomed view of the action. What you don't get though is any cockpit views at all, which some people aren't happy about. The other controversial gameplay element is the Ace Kill, which is like bullet time for planes. If you keep an enemy in your reticule for long enough you can slow down time and aim for the plane's vitals giving you the chance for one hit kills. Once you recognize the arcade nature of the whole experience you will probably embrace this mechanic and indeed you almost have to in order to be able to finish the later "boss" planes. These are just regular planes, but somehow their guns are much more effective and they have the armor of an AT-AT, proving very troublesome until you perfect the Ace Kill.



The single player game is made up of 4 campaigns with a total of 14 missions, providing a rather slight single player experience. Throughout the campaign you unlock new aircraft and variants including the usual Spitfires, Hurricanes and Mustangs and whilst they all feel remarkably similar in flight, they do provide you with different armaments and armor. The missions are varied including bomber escort, precision bombing, torpedo attacks and combat air patrol, although they do sometimes venture into the slightly ridiculous. At one point to make your escape from Berlin, you are effectively flying down streets below rooftop level in order to avoid flak. Another slightly daft mission is one that requires you to take out a speeding armored car, which proves extremely resilient to cannon and rocket attacks despite you previously being able to ace Tiger tanks with the same weaponry.

The game does have an online multi-player mode, but it's a bit of a mystery because there were never any other players online, although the box claims you can play with 15 other players. According to the instructions there are four modes: Dogfight, Team Dogfight, Survivor and Team Survivor, but these are much use if no one is playing them.

Graphics

Sometimes this game looks very good and other times low definition textures make it appear very average. The aircraft all look very good unless viewed up close, but they aren't quite up to the standard on IL-2. The ground and other units do suffer sometexture pop-in, but this isn't too bad and everything moves at a smooth and consistent frame rate. At the slightest sound of a close-by bullet your plane will show damage which is very over the top with often great areas of fuselage missing. Overall the game looks decent without ever lookingstunning , although the weather effects have been handled very well and flying over a snowy France is a joy, especially in the festive season.



Sound

The sound the game is genuinely impressive with very different throaty engine noises depending on which plane you're flying and which planes are around you. Flying in a formation of Fortresses provides a rather epicsound-scape to the battles as their powerful engines throb away. The rest of the in game effects and music are also of a high standard, although the period newsreel voice overs in the introduction videos sounds very hammy.

Lasting Appeal

With only 14 missions, you will finish this game pretty quickly on normal difficulty as it pretty easy with plenty of checkpoints in each mission. There are a few difficulty spikes in some missions, which could mean that you're spending a couple of hours trying to get through that section. Once you've completed each mission the only reason to replay them is to complete any bonus objectives that you may have missed, which is how you unlock more planes. Given that these planes are really only any use in multi player and no one is playing the game, there seems little point to try that hard. Without any other modes, a limited number of levels and a non-existent online community you won't be playing for very long.



Fun Factor
If you accept that this game is not a simulator and plays like a Star Wars game with Spitfires, then it's easy to have fun playing this game. Some of the levels are frustrating and sometimes they seem to go on for ever with a seeming never ending swarm of German planes all around you. The length of the levels is at odds with the length of the game though as has been mentioned. By the end of the singleplayer campaign the variety of the missions means the game is still fun to play, but the "bosses" were greeted with a certain sense of dread just because they were so difficult todispatch and sometimes luck played a bigger part than skill.



The 411:
It was unfortunate that this game was released so close to the brilliant IL-2 Sturmovik, because otherwise it would probably have filled a gap in the console flight schedule, but it does stray a little to far towards the arcade side of things. Ultimately, regardless of the fact that the game doesn't do anything particularly wrong, there's just not enough here to justify the price. If you see it in a few months at a reduced price, then it'scertainly worth a look.

Graphics	7.0	Decent, but not best of breed
Gameplay	7.0	Very arcade focused combat air sim
Sound	8.0	Very good positional audio immerses you in the game
Lasting Appeal	5.0	Too short
Fun Factor	7.0	More fun than it deserves to be
Overall	6.5   [ Average ]