Secret Weapons over Normandy review

Secret Weapons over Normandy puts you in the flying jacket of James Chase, an eager young American officer who joins a squadron of elite international pilots known as the Battlehawks. Flung into combat in the skies over Dunkirk, Chase must master a range of aircraft, weapons and tactics if he’s to survive World War II. Although the game pays a kind of nominal lip service to the major events of the war, I advise you to treat any assertions of historical accuracy with a fistful of salt. Although you will be battling against the Luftwaffe and the Japanese air force, your arch-enemy will be a fictional group of German aircrew known simply as “Nemesis”. They have the best pilots, the most advanced planes and a penchant for appearing on the horizon just when you think you’ve won... The game takes you to all the major theatres of the war, from Dunkirk to Dover, Midway, North Africa, Russia and (eventually) Normandy, and puts you at the controls of an enormous range of aircraft from the conventional (Spitfires and Hurricanes) to the highly experimental (the “Flying Pancake”, which resembles two huge engines bolted onto a trampoline) and the fore-runners of modern jet fighters, like the Messerschmidt 262 or the Gloster Meteor.

Fly me to the Moon

I want to get one thing absolutely clear from the start: Secret Weapons over Normandy is not a flight simulator. Well, I mean, obviously there’s an element of aircraft control involved, but it isn’t the kind of thing a fan of hyper-real, uber-technical PC flight sims would find exciting. No doubt wanting to widen the game’s audience as much as possible, the developers of Secret Weapons over Normandy have decided to simplify the art of flying to the point where a complete novice can jump into the game and start having fun with minimal crashing and burning. This, in case you’re wondering, is a good thing, as it’s in tune with the game’s whole ethos, which favours fun over realism at every turn. There are a couple of training missions in which a bluff and kindly RAF officer teaches you the basics of flying, gunnery and bombing. Then you’re on your own.

A minor control-related gripe here: for reasons best known to themselves, LucasArts have a default control scheme where the left thumbstick controls the plane’s movements and the right thumbstick is used for the throttle. A minimal degree of customisation makes this basically the only control scheme. Great if you’re left-handed, a recipe for some comical flailing if you’re not. It takes a while to master this configuration, and I honestly can’t see why LucasArts didn’t make the controls fully-customisable; other Xbox titles manage it perfectly well, and it makes it much easier to enjoy them straight out of the box.

The flight physics are basic rather than realistic, and landing is considerably simplified by an automated system that means you only have to lower your landing gear and fly over an airfield. Still, this means there’s less faffing about and more action in the air...

Leavin’ on a Jet plane...

The aircraft themselves are well-drawn and fun to play around in. The differences between them are more than just cosmetic, too. After a long mission turning and burning in a fast, nimble fighter plane, the next battle may find you flying an old torpedo bomber that handles like a pig on stilts and only barely exceeds dog walking speed. Progress through the single-player campaign unlocks new aircraft and from time to time you get the chance to capture enemy planes or win aircraft by out-gunning your comrades in the occasional friendly wager. That’s not all, either: completing missions and secondary goals earns you upgrade points, with which you can tweak and update your favourite planes. You can upgrade the armour for protection, the engine for speed and the airframe for manoeuvrability, along with doubling the amount of ammunition you can carry – once a plane’s fully upgraded, it’s damn near invincible. Until those pesky Germans invent something newer and faster, at which point you have to find something else to fly. Occasionally missions will require you to fly a particular plane (the Midway battles, for example) but most of the time you can fly whatever you choose.

The Drugs may not work, but the Guns do

Secret Weapons over Normandy features a wide and rewarding range of weapons to use on the enemy – as well as your aircraft’s internally-fitted standard armament (usually machine guns, or cannon, or both) you can fit several different sizes of bombs, two kinds of tank-busting cannon, torpedoes, and rockets – along with various experimental weapons like radio-guided glide bombs for sinking ships from a safe distance. The weapon types are pretty well-balanced in terms of available ammunition, if a little unrealistic. Have you ever seen pictures of a plane carrying 20 torpedoes? Having said all this, each weapon has a different technique that needs to be mastered if you’re going to enjoy its full potential, and practising high-speed dive-bombing has to be one of the most entertaining tutorials. You can find new uses for secondary weapons – when you see what a 57mm cannon does to enemy tanks, you begin to understand how it can be useful in dealing with fighters, too.

The World at War

The graphics in Secret Weapons over Normandy are very good indeed – frame rates stay smooth throughout, no matter how intense the action gets, and the aircraft models are detailed and realistic. The range of different theatres offers the chance for the developers to tax the Xbox’s graphics processor a bit; in the desert, for example, you can spot enemy vehicles by the dust they raise as they move, while the snowfields of Russia reflect the sun’s glare and raise great clouds of blinding dust when you bomb something. The environments are thoroughly immersive and flying at night or in cloud adds other effects like translucent fog-banks and stars.

The sound design is absolutely cracking, with a dynamic score reminiscent of the best gauntlets and goggles war movies, and radio chatter from friends and enemies in the appropriate languages. This chatter lends more weight to the 1950s war movie atmosphere, since all the nationalities conform to war comic stereotypes – Americans are given do-or-die, enthusiastic characters, the Brits are uniformly upper class and Bigglesish (with the exception of your squadron mechanic, who’s a salt-of-the-earth cockerney type), the Germans always seem to be speaking through gritted teeth and the Russians are heroically emotional. I suppose this might offend some sensitive souls, but I found it added to the “Boy’s Own” flavour of the game. It’s all terribly silly, but it is enormously good fun.

Extra fun can be gained from the other play modes available. As well as split screen dog-fighting or co-operative play, LucasArts have provided an “Instant Action” mode where you choose your plane, your opponents, set a time limit and jump in. If you’re after something more structured, you can try the “Challenge” missions, which run parallel to the campaign but don’t require you to complete them in order to progress through the game. Completing these unlocks bonus planes and earns you upgrade points, so there’s something to be gained from trying. You can also replay old campaign missions to try and up your score and earn bonus prizes. Some downloadable content (extra missions and planes, etc.) can also be had via Xbox Live.

Yes, but is it any good?

So – straightforward mission structure, standard multiplayer options, good graphics and sound, arcade-ish flight physics... it doesn’t sound that impressive, put like that. But I thoroughly enjoyed this game. Whether you’re playing through the campaign trying to save the world from dastardly Germans and perfidious Japanes, or just dog-fighting with a mate after a few pints in the pub, Secret Weapons over Normandy delivers a concentrated jolt of pure, escapist fun. It’s much more than the sum of its parts and the replay potential afforded by your constantly-expanding arsenal of planes and weapons gives the game a much longer shelf-life than first impressions suggest. Well worth a look.