Hands-onAirForce Delta Storm

We welcomed Konami representatives to our offices this afternoon, XDK in tow, and they treated us to a couple of hours of playtime with AirForce Delta Storm--the sequel to the Ace Combat-esque Dreamcast launch title. Blending both real-life military aircraft with others wrought in the world of G.I. Joe fantasy--and setting them all in motion against a richly detailed world-in-air--AirForce Delta Storm seemingly hopes to set the tone for all fanciful dogfight sims to come.

The build we got to play with was essentially the E3 demo: It featured two playable missions and a handful of craft, including an A10 Thunderbolt, an F14 Tomcat, and a sharp, zippy IDF, among others. The missions were fairly straightforward as far as objectives go, but this might well be just a circumstance of the build's status as an E3 demo. It is probably meant to be impressive on the "pick-up-and-play" level, the forays had us zipping through lushly detailed environments, blasting turrets, crawlers, tanks, radars, and basically all manner of equipment and munitions. Due to the game's high level of polish and sharp controls, though, doing so required no goading on Konami's part.

You can choose to control the game via novice and expert settings. The former maps all movement of the jet to the Xbox's left analog stick and has the right and left triggers controlling your thrusters. Shooting your guns, firing missiles, and toggling between targets are all done with the pad's face buttons, and the layout is decent--both weapon keys are adjacent to one another and likewise with the toggles. The expert control scheme, though, is what really sets the game free: It allows for all manner of aerial dynamics, turning what was (in novice mode) an abstract representation of flight into a vehicle capable of mobile poetry. The scheme maps roll and pitch controls to the left stick (which means you can fly upside down), and yaw controls to the right and left triggers. This allows for some very, very precise movements--things along the lines of cliff-face fakes and barrel rolls amid gunfire. Our only complaint, so far as the expert scheme goes, is that the thruster-controls are mapped to the A and B buttons (the ones nearest the bottom), requiring dedicated placement of your thumb a good deal of the time--a thumb which could better be used to deploy gunfire and missiles.

Everything in the game moves incredibly fast--a constant 60fps, as far as we've noticed--and everything remains crystal clear throughout. Subtle effects permeate the action--heat flares enliven the area behind your thrusters, and contrails appear as appropriate. The sun also is an actual light source in AirForce Delta Storm, and it will often serve as a catalyst to show-off your jet's self-shadowing properties. And when you shoot down evil airplanes, you'll actually see their shards of their hulls blast out of explosions, swathed by fire.

If you're still curious about AirForce Delta Storm, check out our previous coverage of the game. We're very excited about this one ourselves, and are counting the days till its November 8th release date, alongside the Xbox. For now, eyeball the massive amounts of media provided.