If someone told you they had just played a pretty awesome game with lots of dog fighting starring a famous celebrity, you'd probably ask "They let Michael Vick have a video game?"
Fortunately for the world, no....this one actually stars Charlie Brown and his good old hound. I booted this one up today not quite sure what to expect. It's getting all sorts of great reviews, so I wanted to see what all the hype was all about.
Right off the bat, the game tries to throw you into multiplayer, and I didn't feel comfortable with that. I was getting killed right and left, and wondered where the hell the offline mode was. After being severely killed for awhile, I rolled back to the main menu and found the campaign. It's hiding below the multiplayer menu, which was a first for me.
The campaign teaches you the ropes, but unfortunately...it's pretty tough. I was never expecting a Snoopy game to be this hard, but the battles are actually sort of challenging and I found myself getting shot down more than a few times in even the early levels.
I played through a level or two of the campaign (there are no achievements until you get to the veteran diffculties)..and then I went back online. After learning a little about the weapons, I was already better. I leveled up to "nugget" (wink wink, nudge nudge) in no time. That's level 10. Next is level 11, "Wingman". I'm almost there. If you make it to 30, you get a "flying ace" achievement...and then there's something better as you get higher I think.
This game is clearly all about the multiplayer, as the campaign is just an offline version of it. As such, I decided not to chase achievements in the campaign, and just went online to have some fun. It's actually a pretty darn good shooter...and I think it warranted the purchase. So long as people keep playing this online (16 player matches were very easy to find when I played this), I think it's going to be a lot of fun.
Overall score? 7.5/10. This game is solid, and has one of the better multiplayer experiences available on Xbox Live arcade right now. Not since Crimson Skies have I had this much fun in a plane game. There are plenty of different weapons and characters to choose from, and getting shot down as your avatar is always fun. :-)
Achievements? I was surprised to find that they're really fucking hard. Online, you have to get 10 "4-kill" streaks before you get one of these, or 25 wins, or rank all the way up to level 30. I am not sure I'll ever do any of those things....but I did get one for playing my first game:
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