Secret Weapons Over Normandy Updated Hands-On Impressions

At a recent LucasArts press event, we got to spend some time with two versions of Secret Weapons Over Normandy, the new World War II combat flight sim from Larry Holland's Totally Games development studio. Holland is responsible for the old favorite Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, as well as the very well-known X-Wing and TIE Fighter games, so Secret Weapons Over Normandy obviously comes with a strong pedigree built in. The game lets you fly a number of Allied fighter planes throughout the various theaters of WWII, and according to Holland, it attempts to strike a fine balance between simulation-style flight mechanics and, more importantly, accessibility.

On the Xbox we got to play the first mission of the game's single-player campaign, which takes place over Dunkirk and has you trying to stop a squadron of German Stuka bombers from destroying an Allied naval convoy. The game is quite playable on the Xbox; despite Totally Games' PC-centric background, it seems the developer has succeeded in creating an aerial combat game that's easy to pick up and play for gamers who are used to the consoles' ease of use. It's possible to pull off some fairly fancy aerial maneuvers with the Xbox's controller, and you can zoom in on the action, use a cinematic camera style, and slow down the action at will pretty easily. The game was running nicely on the Xbox, too, with a steady frame rate and clean-looking visuals that weren't too far off from its higher-resolution PC counterpart.

On the PC, we got to fly the Battle of Midway, where we soared over battleships and evaded antiaircraft guns while fighting Japanese Zeros and trying to protect the Allied bombers attempting to torpedo the enemy carriers. The battle was quite hectic, with a huge number of planes flying in every direction, crossfire from the ships' AA guns, and a generally high level of mayhem occurring. Secret Weapons Over Normandy retains its fairly arcadelike gameplay on the PC, and we managed to take out quite a few of the "Zekes" despite having only a basic familiarity with the game. Of course, the PC version of SWON is the best-looking one--the demo station at the press event was running at quite a high resolution and a very smooth frame rate.

Secret Weapons Over Normandy has been solidifying nicely over the last few months, and the builds that we played of the game today definitely felt pretty complete. Given this, the game's mid-November release date seems realistic and quite attainable. We'll bring you more on Secret Weapons Over Normandy in the coming weeks.