Wing Commander Arena Is fun multiplayer mayhem. Don't forget to pick up the online manual "star*soldier."
Arena features 6 classic WC ships for play. A player can chose from the three main classes of ship on either the Confederation or Kilrathi factions. The ship load out screens provide info about ship stats and weapons loadouts for each. There are light fighters, Medium fighters, and Bombers. Also there are three variants of each ship in the game that trade off on the ships specs for speed VS armament. So in a way there are 18 unique ships available to play in arena. You start out with only one light and medium fighter on each side though and the rest are unlocked as you progress. Unlocking ships can be rewarding but be frustrating to new players going up against better armed ships. So it's good to familiarize yourself in the single player mode with the controls first. Ships can be unlocked in any mode so you'll probably end up unlocking more ships in short order. Each ships gun and missiles loadouts are unique and give each variant it's own feel. Light fighters don't often have strong guns but they are manoeverable enough to evade missiles and gun fire. Some missiles like Heat seekers lock automatically and track enemy ships,and the dumbfire rocket pods (which are the one weapon that seems standard on each fighter) need to be fired in the direction of the enemy. Some fighters have image recognition missiles that require you to hover the target icon over the enemy long enough (not too long thankfully) to get a lock, otherwise they dumbfire and you are just wasting these precious comodities. The left sholulder button fires your more powerfull missiles which you will want to save for when they count because you don't get a lot of them unless you are flying a bomber. THe right shoulder button fires the dumbfire rocket pods which most ships have a decent supply of. Fortunately powerups are scattered throughout the maps so if you've memorized where they are likely to apear you won't have to die to get a restock of weapons. Also on some maps, various satelites will restock/repair your ship if you dock with them. Most ships have two different sets of guns. The left trigger and right trigger fire each type independantly whereas squezing them both fires both guns at once (the classic full guns of the WC series). You'll want to be carefull though as some guns drain your gun capacitor at faster rates than others leaving you without amunition at critical times. Each gun has it's own refire rate and energy consuption rate so it will take a bit of playing to really get a handle on the nuances of each weapon. Bombers also have rear firing turrets which can be a life saver because of the ships slow speed. Pressing the Y button will send off bursts of gun fire at anyone following behind you.
The other defensive and offensive thing in the game are the devices. Most ships come loaded with two kinds. You select them with the x button and an Icon on the bottom of the screen changes to indicate which device is chosen. Some of the devices in the game include Cloakin devices on some ships. Only one confed ship (an arrow variant) come equiped with one but they are standard on the Kilrathi ships. They allow you to sneak up on unsuspecting enemies. However some ships are equiped with "sonar" pings that detect cloaked ships. There are also turret mines that are stationary gun mounts that can be dropped anywhere, regular and cloaked mines that can be layed in defensive fields, Chaff pods for deflecting missiles, and more. Also, some power ups add aditional devices while others tweak your ship stats to replenish weapons, boost shields, repair damage, increase gun strength, sheid strength and ship speed, and more.
The game is in 3d but the action takes place on a 2D plane. In some ways this is a welcome move in an arcade shooter where you need to concentrate of your flying and enemies. It also frees up the bandwith of the arcade platform to allow for the 16 player mayhem instead of having only 4 players. As such every match I've played has been lag free. While I thought I might miss the third axis, I find the presentation perfect for the style of game. Arena makes no pretentions about being Wing Commander 7, but rather is a fun multiplayer mashup in the Wing Commander universe - a spinoff I suppose. You manoever your ship with the left stick. Some ships are a lot more manoeverable than others so some of the heavier ships are harder to turn around. Each ship builds up momentum too so a bit of stick handling is often required to keep from hitting walls. The right stick is used for special manoevers. In this area, it seems like the stick could be slightly more responsive. However the manoevers are an essential tool in any wingnuts playbook. If you wan't more than one kill per respawn youll need to learn them fast. Moving the stick left or right will do a barrel roll in either direction. Pushing forward or back will perform hops or loops. these are essential for evading enemy fire and missiles. And manoevers like loops are great for putting you right on the tail of an enemy that was tailing you. However bombers can only perform the Hop manoevers. But they make up for their lack of manoeverability with fire power. All in all the gameplay is simple enough to pick up and start button mashing, but the game has enough complexity beneath the surface to reward those who take the time to perfect their flying abitities. You can dowload a neat in-universe manual in PDF form for free for the game from EA's arcade website or from the xbox.com page for Arena. Star*soldier {the manual) has a section that describes how to pull off all the various manoevers. The various single player modes are fun but can get old, There's a neat take on Asteroids that you've probably heard about. You have to defent a bunch of satelites from increasing waves of rocks and eventually fighters that try and take shots at your satelites. Theres a gauntlet mode that has you defending a Floating space habitat that is based on the Capital ship from wing commander prophecy. You have to defend the ship from increasing waves of enemy fighters. There are online leaderboards for these modes so you'll be able to compare yourself to your friends. There's also a free mode - proving grounds - which is good for practice, but you will most likely want to get right into the multiplayer mayhem, and at 16 players it's the largest offering on the Live Arcade. Wing commander arena is also the first game to introduce team chat to the Live arcade. This will allow you to coordinate your attack in one of the most fun modes in arena - the Capship attack. You and your teammates need to defend your own capship while trying to take down the enemy's. This means you will want to have the lighters ships covering the slow moving bombers on their attack runs. There are three levels of componets on each capship that need taken out to destroy the capships. When the first level is taken out the ship drops down (sinks towards a planet) to give your team access to the next level.
There's also a team based "capture the flag" mode in which your team has to manoever through asteroids to capture satelites. The map is set up to allow for a good deal of defensive planning to try and keep the satelites captured for your team. Laying mines can be a good tactic here.
A couple of modes can be played in both team mode and free-for-all. The boneyard and space station maps have you competing for frags. The space station map is somewhat more enclosed where as the boneyard ( that features some wreakage of old ships in the background) provides some wide open spaces as well as some neat maze like hiding places giving a varied feel to the frenetic gameplay. Duel is a one on one map that pits out mano a mano with another player in a large crater. And the bearpit is kind of an interesting combination. Players are put two at a time in the center ring to fight it out. The winner stays in the middle and tries to get a streak of kills going. PLayers outside the inner circle can fight eachother while they wait for their turn to challenge the winner. They can even take potshots into the inner "bearpit". I died in the bearpit once when a lucky shot made it's way through one of the portals into the pit. On the outer ring, player can also look for a blue power-up that activates the "ring game." When you get the power-up a sequence of rings appear that need to be navigated through in order... and in time. You'll almost need to rely solely on the right stick for this as you will need to do loops and such to get high and low rings. Each time you complete a level you can play it again for three increasing levels of difficulty. Completing all the difficulty levels in once match will get you an acheivement.
On to the presentation: The overall look of the game is decent. The most bland map is the Meteor Storm one. The rest have enough little details to keep the terain detailed. It's certainly not "next gen" but they are definitely adequate for an arcade title. It's too bad that the only levels playable in the demo are the least interesting ones visually speaking. The sound effects are good thoughout. Each gun type has it's own sound and a siren effect plays briefly to let you know when your ship is critically damaged and that you will die soon if you don't find a powerup fast. The music is good, however it does get a little repetitive after a while and could have used some more variation. It's a remix of some of the Oldziey stuff from Wing Commander 3, 4 and prophecy but it would have been nice to see a little more of it, but I guess that's what custom playlists and USB keys are for. On a minor note the looping isn't the greatest and is quite noticable when the track starts over. Howver the game is only a 42 meg download despite the arcade limit having been upped to 150MB. The game will also fit on of the old cheap 50MB memory cards meaning that people with CORE systems will still be able to download and play the game. Wing Commander arena costs 800 points and is definitely worth it. You will get a lot of mileage out of your points in the multiplayer modes, and attacking capships with your friends is a blast. You might as well get the demo if you don't plan on playing online as the multiplayer modes - what this game is all about - aren't available in the demo.