Air Force Delta Storm Preview

Judging by the response that some gamers had when Konami made its Xbox support official, you might think that a new Metal Gear Solid is the only thing the company's good for. Of course, gamers are forgetting another, lesser-known franchise that's also on its way to Microsoft's console. Air Force Delta Storm, the upgrade/sequel to Air Force Delta on the Dreamcast, is coming to the Xbox, and--unlike any other Metal Gear Solid sequel or remake--it's going to arrive alongside the system at launch. Maybe there aren't the cinematic cameras or deep characterization you would expect from Solid and the gang, but blowing stuff up in superpowered jets has unique charms all its own.

Air Force Delta Storm isn't far removed from Namco's well-known Ace Combat franchise in terms of design--you still have to make your way through more than 50 missions of ever-increasing difficulty. But apparently, Delta Storm lacks much of a larger plot: You fly for an anonymous and fictional organization, and even then, the backgrounds surrounding each mission are relatively self-contained. The plot isn't the focus in Delta Storm, though; usually, you'll have to worry only about where you want to fly next and which craft you'll use to get there. Once you're in the wild blue yonder, you get to the game's heart--lots of intense dogfight action. Aside from taking on fellow aces, though, Delta Storm engages you in a variety of missions, ranging from reconnaissance to wild weasels (assaults on anti-aircraft bunkers). If this sounds like much of the same story we heard in the original Air Force Delta, you're correct. In terms of setting and overall objectives, Air Force Delta Storm remains essentially unchanged from its predecessor.

More aircraft and refined control are the central improvements you should expect in Delta Storm's gameplay. For its aircraft roster, Konami mixes a few well-known modern-day fighters with a host of fictional and prototype aircraft from around the world. You can fly Top Gun-style in the classic F-14 Tomcat; you can try your hand at interceptors like the F-18 Hornet or F-22; or you can even play the role of bombardier in a close-support fighter like the A-10 Warthog. Mixed in with the standard roster of fighter craft are some lesser-known marvels such as the Su-27, the S-37 Berkut, the Mirage, and even the new Taiwanese Chingkua. Konami promises more than 80 fighters in all.

We had a chance to play the Delta Storm at E3 and were surprised by how closely the game held to its Dreamcast roots. At the demo, we had a few different types of aircraft to choose from, as well as a couple of different types of missions. We played with both the A-10 Warthog (the aforementioned close-support bomber) and a fictional, highly maneuverable delta-winged aircraft to see how differently the two planes handled. We played the game with "expert controls" enabled, which let us make small flap adjustments with two controller buttons.

Gameplay remained close to that of Air Force Delta. Despite the enhanced expert controls in Delta Storm, we should point out that the game feels no more realistic than its DC predecessor. Locking on and launching missiles is quite uncomplicated--you maintain target lock for a few seconds and then let 'em rip. The jets seem extremely sensitive to the analog joystick, though, and if you overcorrect, it's very easy to lose your target if you aren't careful. Konami is still tweaking the handling of the jet fighters; the expert controls, which allow for more precise left and right movements, help somewhat in this regard.

Graphically, the E3 demo was both encouraging and troublesome. For starters, the game already is running at a supersmooth 60 frames per second; however, the trade-off seemed to come with the surprising amounts of fog, which becomes more noticeable the higher you climb with the aircraft. The game engine supports clouds, but the ones we saw are rather small, shoddy, and don't mesh well with the bitmapped skies and clouds in the background. We expect that the fog will be greatly reduced by the final release and that Konami will work to make the cloud effects more realistic. Delta Storm has the obligatory air combat special effects, such as a gaudy lens flare and massive fireballs when you down fighters. More impressive, though, are the game's subtler visual traces, like the self-shadowing you notice when your plane banks away from the sun or the increased engine backwash when you slam the throttle--or even the tiny bits of particle debris that cascade from a wingtip when impacted by flak.

According to Konami, you'll fly in a huge number of different locales, and we saw evidence of this in the levels shown at E3. One area features a massive industrial facility tucked into a high-elevation mountain chain, while another has you fighting off several planes in the sunset, high off the coast of a tropical mainland. Beyond enemy fighters, we saw surface-to-air missile launchers' (SAMs'] tanks, bunkers, and turrets. Texture work is crisp and photo-realistic (if not overly varied) from two to four thousand feet but become somewhat muddled when you fly closer to the ground. While not as bad as in Air Combat 4's E3 demo, the effect became apparent only when we were piloting the A-10 in a ground assault mission. Seemingly, as long as you're dogfighting well above the ground, the game maintains a smooth, defined appearance. Going too high results in fog, however, and going too low reveals some blurry ground textures.

Certainly, no one expects Air Force Delta Storm to be Konami's Ace, but the game looks like it will provide Xbox owners with the same no-nonsense, arcade-style dogfighting as its Dreamcast predecessor. If Konami manages to tweak the still-sensitive controls and pull back on the blankets of fog that cover the gameworld at loftier heights, then Delta Storm may give the PS2's Ace Combat 4 a run for best console flight simulator when both are released later this year. Look for the game to arrive at the Xbox launch in November.