A common cliché about flying says that flying is hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of stark terror. Since the dawn of civilization humans have always wanted to take to the skies, and in this day and age it’s pretty much an every day event. Flying isn’t about stark terror anymore, unless you’re flying a combat jet over the skies of hostile territory of course. While not a lot of us have the brass to fly at mach speeds, Asmik Ace and Sammy Studios have given us the next best thing with the latest installment of their flight combat series, Lethal Skies 2. Although Namco’s Ace Combat series is an unapologetic arcade shooter, Lethal Skies has always been about giving players a realistic experience of flying an F-16 without making it boring.

Oddly enough, Lethal Skies 2 takes place in the year 20XX, the same year as their upcoming title Seven Samurai 20XX. Can you smell the crossover ideas brewing? Getting back to the game, in the year 20XX the army of the Frontier Nationals have won their year long war with the WORF, and are now in the process of rebuilding the world’s structure. But let’s not kid ourselves here; the story is merely an excuse for us to fly around and blow stuff up real good.

The majority of the 20+ missions that you’ll face in Lethal Skies 2 are pretty standard. Things start off with a basic mission to get you acquainted with the physics and controls of the game. Here you’ll have to fight off two B2 bombers and defend a city against missile strikes. The later missions get progressively tougher and give the player a wide variety of objectives to complete, everything from protecting a squadron of bombers to rescuing fallen comrades before they’re captured by the enemy. Although the missions themselves aren’t anything that gamers haven’t seen before, the circumstances in which they occur are pretty challenging even on the easiest difficulty setting. More often than not you’ll have to contend not only with enemy fire but also the natural surroundings. Flying through narrow canyons at mach speeds just to pick up a couple of soldiers is enough to give anyone a heart attack. With each mission completed you have the ability not only to unlock more combat fighters, but wingmen as well. The wingmen assigned to you are extremely vital to your missions, as most of your objectives are time sensitive. Trying to do everything yourself will only end up with you and your squad failing. This lesson is learned as early as the second mission, as you have to contend with both ground and air forces. Trying to destroy everything yourself will only result in a lost cause, so unlike other flight combat games, your wingmen actually come in very handy here. As your wingmen shoot down targets, they gain levels of experience, which improve their aim and flying skills. It also ups their ability to shoot down ground-based or air-based targets, depending on what you’ve commanded them to go after the most.

If there’s one thing that Lethal Skies 2 does very well, it’s being able to tread the fine line between a realistic combat game and a fun one. There are a few details that make the game more realistic. You won’t be able to bounce off the ground unscathed, you have a set amount of fuel and ammunition for each mission, and it’s not always guaranteed that you’d be able to shoot down bogeys. The enemy fighters (especially in later levels) are as smart as you are in their ability to avoid incoming missiles by doing some fancy moves or simply throwing down the chaff at appropriate times. On the other hand, the game is very lenient when it comes to actually flying your craft around. This is helped by the fact that the control layout is extremely intuitive. While the L1/R1 buttons are used to slow down and accelerate your craft, the L2/R2 buttons are used to help you turn by operating the yaw/rudders to help you make sharp turns in the air. In fact, the controls are probably the best thing about Lethal Skies 2; at no point will you ever have to fight with the layout to make it do what you want. You may have some trouble adjusting to turning with the rudders and reducing/accelerating speed, but that’s an issue that will quickly go away within minutes.

If there were any problem with the game, it would be in its sense of speed. Often it can be too hard to judge just how far an object is because of the speed you’re going at. You constantly have to watch the speed display on the screen just to make sure you’re going at a speed that’s best for your situation. While aspiring pilots may say that’s part of the experience of flying, I’d rather feel like I’m going a certain speed than having to check some do-hickey on my HUD. One other minor problem has to do with planes after they’ve been shot down. Since I’ve never taken a physics course in my entire life I’m not too sure how it would work, but I assume that if a plane loses its power to stay in the air, it should start falling to the ground immediately, right? That doesn’t happen in this game. Word to anyone who picks up this game: If you shoot down a plane that’s coming towards you, be ready to pull up because it will ram into you.

Visually Lethal Skies 2 is a fairly mixed bag. The game starts off with a beautifully edited video and features some great FMV cutscenes in between the action. Where the game stumbles just a little is with the in-game graphics. Granted, some of the effects that they use in the game are well done. The blur effect with the afterburners and most of the explosions look great. And although the craft models for the fighters and other vehicles look stellar, the environments leave something to be desired. It’s not that they’re terrible, but compared to the rest of the game they’re pretty boring. The music in the game is actually a nice mix of old school rock during the pre-mission scenes and some generic hard rock during combat. I actually find myself staying at the briefing screen just a little bit longer to hear that twangy guitar play.

Sure, the realm of flight combat isn’t exactly a mainstream genre, but anyone who has seen movies such as Top Gun or Iron Eagle will love the chance to climb into the cockpit of a MiG29 to shoot down a couple of bad guys. Arcade fans can have their Ace Combat, but for those who want something closer to the real deal, look no further than Lethal Skies 2.

Special Video: Lethal Skies 2 Black Ops Planes Unleashed

· · · Reno