Flying Tigers: Shadows Over China review

Reviewed on: Xbox One

Flying Tigers: Shadows Over China is an air combat simulator based on the real historical events of the volunteer squadrons of American pilots who secretly set out to defend the Chinese mainland during World War II.

The game has a single-player campaign that makes you live through a wide variety of clandestine missions carried out by these American pilots in Chinese territory. Missions as varied as strategic bombing, reconnaissance missions, night missions, among various things a good combat aircraft can do. The game also has worthy multiplayer modes, such as Team Dogfights, Rocket Battle or Flagbusters, with 16 planes in the same battle. And it keeps you hooked for a long time in that area, since it is quite competitive, and the servers are running it smoothly.

Flying Tigers features more than 20 models of Allied and Japanese aircraft, which are available as the air battles descend into chaos in the Chinese skies. The game’s combat is quite frenetic and exciting, and it also has help from “TrazerTime”, a slow-motion firing system reminiscent of Max Payne, among other games.

Flying Tigers doesn’t have a sweeping story with characters that evolves as the game advances. Instead, it has several missions that are loosely connected at best. All missions pretty much consist of just flying and shooting and/or bombing everything marked red above the dots. All the characters are just bored cutouts and never had any personal growth or even just a basic personality.

The only real story aspect you get is at the end of each mission. This report provides a basic summary of what just happened and how it would affect the war effort. This actually seems cool, and since it is based on real stories, there is always something interesting. It was a pleasant way of trying to connect the missions and make them truly build on the real war effort.

The gameplay is even fun, especially in the bombing missions, where it is quite gratifying to see that you hit the target perfectly; and with the bomb camera it looks even better. Aircraft control can be chosen in two ways: third person, or from inside the cockpit. Third person leaves you freer, for quick movements and for seeing the enemy, but the inside-the-plane view can sometimes leave you a bit lost in the heat of battle. Some enemy planes seem to be bullet sponges: they have a real health bar, like the most worthy RPG BOSSES, but just keep shooting and shooting and eventually they go down. Points for the A.I. in this part: they know well how to dodge, retreat and circle around you.

Another point to address with the game was the mission structure. I think it would be more practical if they were more open than just a linear progression of objectives that rarely change between shooting or bombing. Occasionally they mix it up a little and you fly in a straight line while getting information. While the controls make it harder than it should be, it is still far from thrilling gameplay.

As I always like to point out a game’s flaws, this one wasn’t left out, of course. Most of the time, however, it is a frustrating experience to play this game, where the hardest opponent is the control of your own plane, which you are stuck with. You will die a lot, crashing a lot into the ground or into other objects. The control at the start is very sensitive, something I solved by lowering the analog stick sensitivity, but even so it still presents difficulties. The game showed great potential, but the poor controls and lack of variety are hard to get past.

The graphics and sounds are not like “AAA” titles, but are acceptable for an indie game. They recall graphics from the end of the generation before last, with a small improvement. The sound of the enemies before being shot down is even nice to hear, but nothing essential.

CONCLUSION

Flying Tigers: Shadows Over China is a good game for killing time sometimes. Unfortunately, it has some repetitive missions and poor controls. The story could have been worked on better to hold the player for more than two missions. If the enemies weren’t slow to take down, that would also help the gameplay a lot.
Despite simple graphics and difficult controls I had a lot of fun with the game. If you want to fly and shoot down planes, this will provide a few hours of fun.
The game has PT-BR subtitles.

FINAL VERDICT:

Narration: 6
Audiovisual: 4
Gameplay: 5

XBOX ONE version.