Review: Heroes Over Europe

Five years ago IR Gurus and Ubisoft brought us Heroes of the Pacific, an arcade-oriented flight sim which essentially seemed to be the first legitimate competitor to Crimson Skies, a title that had dominated the genre throughout the life of the Xbox.  Though released at the end of the lifecycle of the system the game met generally favorable reviews and sold well enough to warrant a sequel.  Heroes Over Europe, though having very little to do with its predecessor other than time period, takes the battle to the other side of the world and arguably the most overused setting in the history of video games.  But does Heroes Over Europe fly high or does it crash and burn?

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Buy War Bonds!

Heroes occurs over the course of four different campaigns between the beginnings of the war in 1940 and follows through to the bombing raids on Berlin in January of 1945.  During that time frame you play as one of three different pilots, primarily focusing on the American pilot who joins the Royal Air Force (a force composed of volunteers from the US, Britain, and Poland) to show up his father.  The various campaigns range in size from up to six levels to an abysmal two.  The singleplayer experience jumps across the various campaigns and gives you the chance to try out a bunch of different types of planes but therein lies one of the first problems players will come to notice: a lack of cohesiveness.  When playing the game and jumping from campaign to campaign you’ll notice that, up until the very end of the game, none of them have almost anything to do with the other.

Each campaign takes you through a tour of service of four different flight groups whose missions concern different phases of the war, the first campaign (and longest of the game) covering the defense of Britain in 1940.  From there the game branches out and covers different sections of the war with levels that are based in and out of reality.  Players get to experience battles like the Battle of the Bulge, escort bombing raids across the English Channel, and even participate in several raids within Germany itself.  Most of the levels play out with some sense of reality but most of them reside more on the fictitious side than anything else.  Call me crazy, but I don’t recall a raid into 1942 Berlin to interrupt a Nazi war rally, do you?  If you’re looking for historic authenticity then it’d probably be best to look elsewhere.

Two strong omissions must be mentioned when considering the overall breath of the singleplayer campaign: the lack of a Russian or an Italian campaign.  The entirety of the game covers the American and British war effort in northern Europe and doesn’t concern itself with the Eastern Front or the invasion of Sicily and mainland Italy, two significant events in the history of the war that could have had some great battles to fight.  The Russian campaign could have given us a much more edgy take on the war effort and could have concluded the war with the invasion of Berlin in April 1945 but instead the game ends in January of that year which is nothing more than a tease for what could have been an epic battle.

The only other issue players will run into storywise is that the characters in the game are faceless and really don’t attach any meaningful relationship to the player; you don’t seem to care who dies and who survives.  They do share some witty banter between them but otherwise lack anything that makes them standout from the crowd as interesting characters.

Unfortunately the game’s multiplayer segment was not reviewable at this time as multiple attempts to play online lead to empty lobbies with no one to play against.

Tally Ho!

Flight sims occur few and far between on consoles these days with the last major flight title to be Tom Clancy’s HAWX this past March.  Obviously as a World War II game you’re looking at a different dogfighting experience than you’d play in a modern fighter scenario.  The game has a strong arrangement of planes that are unlocked based on campaign progression and the completion of objectives therein.  Heroes Over Europe’s selection is also arraigned in chronological as well so don’t look to be flying a P-51 Mustang during the Battle of Britain on your first go-around, though you can fly unlocked planes in earlier missions of the game.  The selection includes variations of several planes as well that may include stronger stats or additional loadouts such as rockets, bombs, or both.  You’ll quickly find yourself sticking to one model or another to do most of your missions, though several of them require you to fly one particular aircraft.

The level arrangement of the game is designed to fit the campaign you are playing in.  For example, during the first campaign in the Battle of Britain players will be defending British positions and taking out German bombers making a run on London itself.  The majority of the offensive levels involve either escort missions, defending allied positions against onslaughts of German air and ground vehicles, and light raids into enemy territory.  As previously stated many of the levels venture into the realm of fantasy more than anything which offers a good breakup in the monotony of ending the Axis threat.  The final campaign of the game primarily consists of escort missions for bombing raids into the heart of Germany itself and can get tedious at times but overall it is an enjoyable experience.

Combat in Heroes Over Europe is 80% dogfighting with a mix of exploration and investigation built into it.  Several of the more pleasant missions involve torpedo runs in a biplane against German warships as well as the defense of American infantry positions in the Ardennes forest.  One particularly interesting mission involves the escort of a squadron of B-17 flying fortresses across the English Channel during which one of the bombers you are escorting turns out to be commanded by German spies and is proceeding to take out the other bombers in the formation.  The only way to find out which one it is though is to carefully fly close to them until you locate which ones are firing their weapons.  Realistic, no but quite entertaining.

Another element of the combat system Heroes utilizes is the Ace Kill ability which allows players to instantly kill an enemy fighter.  In order to activate the ability players must get in close behind an enemy combatant and charge a meter.  Once activated the camera zooms in on the targeted plane and highlights weak points on the body of the aircraft.  If executed correctly Ace Kills can be strung along and can allow you to wipe out entire squadrons of enemies in just a handful of seconds as opposed to doing traditional dogfighting.  Enemy fire will quickly reduce your meter so the optimal approach is to keep bucking and weaving between enemies instead of focusing on one particular one.  Boss battles against enemy aces are make indefinitely easy by this ability, provided the ace doesn’t shoot you down while you are trying to charge the kill meter.

The only real gameplay problem players will run into is the fact that the enemy AI is incredibly biased against you.  As if a decree from Adolf Hitler himself was made that you are the most wanted man in all of Europe it seems that German fighters will spend the majority of their time focusing on you rather than any other combatant on the field.  More often than not you’ll find half a dozen German fighters on your tail gunning you down while attempting to get an Ace Kill.  When playing on the ace difficulty it is almost impossible to complete a level without dying two dozen times, an experience that is distressing considering the fact that the game’s checkpoint system is based on objective completion rather than player saves.

A Hail of Gunfire

Heroes Over Europe’s presentation is a mixed bag of great plane models and slightly disappointing textures and models on everything else.  The aircraft in the game have a great amount of detail on them with real-time damage modeling, though damage seems to have almost no effect on the handling of an aircraft.  The on-screen vehicle count is very impressive at times, especially in the later missions.  The sense of speed is greatly translated on screen by blurring and heightened focus upon a target and watching smoke contrails follow a fleeing fighter is a thing of beauty.  However, once you turn your eyes to the environment things start to get a little ugly.  Ground textures are usually nice to look at but buildings are blocky, lack detail, and are repeatedly used over and over again with not much variety in models.  Also, I’m not too certain but I don’t believe that many streets in Germany are wide enough to allow heavy bombers to fly down them.  The weather isn’t very well done either as stormy conditions are anything but a hazard in the game and are not as visually worrying as they should be.  Cloud formations are fine at a distance but don’t feel exactly realistic upon close inspection.

Each mission in the game is cinematically presented not with gameplay footage or character models but rather by artist illustrations and animations.  These sequences are monologues of the characters usually talking about how they feel about the war or letters sent home to loved ones that have been done to death by every single war movie/game in existence and don’t feel necessary given that the characters are not interesting.   The only interesting cinematics come in the form of black and white newsreels with a overly charming and enthusiastic voiceover typical of the propaganda films of the era that precede several levels.  Players will find themselves skipping through them rather than watching them as they just aren’t worth watching.  Since the title of the game implies that we get to see a romanticized version of the war it is a shame that the overall story (if you could call it that) doesn’t present itself in a manner that warrants attention.  In the end all you will want to do is skip through the cinemas and get right to the meat of the gameplay.

The Road to Victory

Heroes Over Europe is an interesting if flawed title for players looking for something a little different to play without venturing outside the realm of Nazi-killing.  The singleplayer campaign doesn’t warrant a second playthrough unless you are achievement/trophy hunting and the multiplayer experience is nowhere to be found given that everyone else right now is off playing Halo 3 ODST.  Looking beyond the AI, the cinematic blandness you find a pretty decent game that easily deserves a rent but is definitely a questionable buy.  Sorry Transmission Games, but better luck next time.