I had a friend a number of years ago who had his pilot's license and loved to play a flight simulator on his computer. It was as near to the real thing as you can get he'd often claim. I never had the patience for those games, as realistic as they were. The myriad of details that one was expected to keep track of didn't provide the entertainment that I craved. I was always more of an arcade pilot. Shoot-'em-down and realism be damned. But what if a company were to take these two different styles of play and meld them into one uber-flight game? A game that had action and realism? One where the excitement of arcade games was supplemented by the detail and realism of computer based flight sims? Well, if Taito's newest release for the X-Box 360, Over G Fighters, is any indication, it was pretty much suck. Instead of taking the best of both worlds, they seemed to have harvested the weakest elements of each and ended up with a mess that won't please either camp of gamer.

Gameplay:

In Over G Fighters you're a crack pilot for the Energy Air Force and as such are sent all over the world to fight well armed terrorists. In scenario mode you're taken through a series of missions, and a good number of them at that, where you're piloting skills are tested against planes, tanks, and other dangers. As you go through the various missions you unlock new planes and get to see your pilot stats improve. So far so good. The problem is that the missions are often boring and uneventful. You'll typically start off by taking off and then flying for a minute or two in order to reach the enemy targets. The computer locks onto the bad guys, you press the "X" button, and the mission is over. That's it. It takes more time to take off and reach the enemy than it does to destroy them. Even when there are three or four enemies that challenge isn't that great. They are usually all lines up like ducks at a shooting gallery and you pick them off with your missles one-by-one. All this happens at a fairly great distance so that the only thing you really see is a red icon signifying a valid target.

There really aren't dog-fights as such. Which ever pilot gets a lock first wins the battle. The missiles that you shoot hardly ever miss, and if you get one on you're tail it's almost impossible to evade. Since you don't even see the enemy's plane, the battles have all the excitement of throwing rocks into a lake.

Yes, there is a visceral thrill the first time you shoot down a bogie, but that soon fades as each mission starts to feel the same. In addition to the lack of excitement, the controls aren't that well thought out. The planes move rather sluggishly, and it can be difficult to get the enemy in your sights if you overshoot him or have climbed too high. Changing the control setting from the default "arcade" to "real" helps a bit, but not much.

Another problem with the game, albeit a minor one that was irritating none the less, is that your pilot stats improve as you work your way through the missions, but they don't seem to have much effect on gameplay. This part of the game seemed to be added in for no real reason.

The challenge mode is an endless free-for-all where you are two wingmen (who are just next to useless) try to see how many enemies you can shoot down. When you run out of ammunition and fuel, you land, take on more supplies, and go up again. While this was fun at first, it soon became dull, just like the rest of the game.

This game is also X-Box Live enabled, allowing you to enter into either an arena battle where several teams try to take out the other players or Verses mode in which two teams combat against each other. These were a little more challenging than the actual game itself, but still didn't provide a lot of thrills.

Graphics:

The graphics were okay, but not outstanding. A lot of time was spent on the plane designs, it's too bad you never see the other planes in the game. As soon as they're big enough to make out, they're toast. Even in the cut scenes the planes looked a little flat and plastic rather than real 3D objects. The rest of the game wasn't really impressive looking either. The explosions were cool, but the ground wasn't rendered very well. It looked very fake and like it was an afterthought.

There are three screen settings that you can play with, though I only found one of them useful. In Cockpit mode you're sitting in the cockpit and can see all of the dials and controls. The problem is that this takes up way too much of the screen. Follow mode places the camera right behind your aircraft. This looks really cool, but it's not particularly useful. The Aircraft view was the one that worked the best.

Audio:

Like the graphics, the audio was acceptable but not much more than that. The lame guitar based rock riffs that play constantly in the background are clear enough, but they get old really fast. The voice acting is pretty wretched too. The mission briefings all sound flat and lifeless and the radio messages from the wingman are horrible too. Why can't they get decent actors to provide the voices for video games?

Conclusion:

When thinking about a rating for a game, I often ask myself how I'd feel if I paid retail price for it. If I had shelled out $60 for this title, I'd be pretty pissed; There just isn't that much value in it. The gameplay is very repetitive and the action onscreen is rarely exciting. The sluggish controls and the overly simple fights make this an uninteresting and dull game. There are better things to spend your money on. Skip it.