Gaming Target - Xbox: Secret Weapons Over Normandy

Written by Alex Fitzgerald on August 07, 2003

First Impressions: Еand the not so secret game based on them

I'm sitting here in my bedroom with a bottle of water and a keyboard at my fingertips. One of my favorite bands, Course of Empire, is playing through the stereo. This is the perfect environment for me to write, yet I can't find the words to describe this new game, entitled Secret Weapons Over Normandy. The game just is looking too good for words, with Larry Holland and his teams manning the game (the same guys who brought us X-Wing and TIE Fighter), which is just perfect for the game's setting.

Unlike many flight simulators these days Secret Weapons Over Normandy buries itself into fantasy rather than realism. Though the game's 15 missions or so will be set in real World War II battles, the planes you pilot will be less than realistic to say the least, and the controls will also be very un realistic, opting to give the player easy control over their aircraft rather than keeping absolutely realistic.

Though many flight simulation buffs may whine hearing about this anyone who spends an hour or so with the game will see that the arcade-like gameplay is too fun to criticize. The way it works is this: You launch off from your base and go off into the air to fight countless amounts of enemies at once. Fortunately for you, you have plenty of weapons in your arsenal to help you along. Take the lock-on feature for example. All you need to do to keep closer sights on an enemy is tap a button, and then the game will keep the camera locked on it, ensuring that you won't lose said target.

Once you're ready to blast a target away you can do one of a couple of things. If your target is moving really quickly you can tap a button to slow down time, much in the fashion of Max Payne's bullet time. If you want to do more than that though you can just launch a guided missile off and navigate it to your enemy's death by a first-person camera. Finally, if killing your enemy is proving too difficult to do for you with your current aircraft, you can always just land on your base again and switch vessels. Neat!

The game will also give you some unlockables to work towards getting. For one, you can replay any mission after you're done with it, with aircrafts you won later on in the game, which should be interesting. You can also unlock up to 30 different kinds of aircraft if you so wish to. With all of these unlockables tacked on to the normal missions, Secret Weapons Over Normandy is said to take around 30 hours to complete...a tasty number for sure. There will also be multiplayer modes, such as a co-op mode, to keep players interested in the game long after they've beaten the main campaign.