AirForce Delta

While scanning through a stack of Dreamcast games at a local convention this one caught my eye. Like the old days, I just saw the box art and thought it looked like Ace Combat so I picked it up. Turns out the box art didn’t lie. This is an arcade fighter jet game about blowing up jets, boats and battle fortresses. That last item does imply this isn’t a super serious game even though it kinda tries to tell a serious story about being a mercenary pilot. What little plot this does have is told via the briefing before each battle. Pretty much comes down to country A hates country B and A really hates peace talks. Turns out B doesn’t have much of an army so they hire a bunch of mercs that include the player character. To secure peace the player must take on 20 missions (I want to note the box art says 20+ missions which is a lie.) to wipe out all of the opposing forces.

While the story may be generic the aspect of flying around in a fighter jet is where this game shines. Skimming the ground at Mach speed taking out ground targets with a missile was when I knew this game was fun. None of the physics of flying the plane are lifelike at all other than stalling when going too slow. Making it possible to maneuver the plane in any direction. Like most other fighter jet games the gist of your time will be locking onto foes and blasting them with the lock on missiles. With the only other weapon being a useless Vulcan cannon that I constantly used but I’m pretty sure only one other plane was shot down with it. It never felt like I had to fight the controls to do something. Flying around blowing up stuff was and is still fun to do. Since the game only has two weapons it does let the player buy new planes that have different stats. The currency to do that is gained by completing missions.

In the visual department, this looks great. Sure it isn’t going to stand with any modern games but it has a nice clean visual style that doesn’t look bad. The music that goes along with the action fits in perfectly. Throughout my playthrough, the music really helped to give off the vibe that I was a cool fighter pilot doing crazy missions. Even the mission design has some variety. A few unique missions like flying down a cannon to blow up a base or defending a tower at least keep the gameplay from getting stale quickly.

All of this sounds great but the biggest sin this game has is the replayability factor. Once the credits started to roll the game seemed a bit short at around 2-3 hours. Without any reason for me to take up the offer of the new game plus option other than if I wanted to collect all the planes. Since all the planes are similar other than having slightly less movability or armor I didn’t see a reason to keep playing. A lot of the mission design is a bit uninspired with most missions consisting of a giant square landmass that has a few 3D buildings on top of it. Like I mentioned before this does have a few unique set pieces but most of it is uninspired.

By the time the save screen popped up after the final mission my feelings were mixed. This was a competent fighter game similar to Ace Combat. It had great music yet the missions weren’t that unique. Going at an insane speed felt great yet the game never pushed me to do that until the final few missions. So, in the end, this is a good fighter jet game. It isn’t amazing but if any of this text makes you interested in checking out the game then pick it up.