Though aircraft shooters have seen many variations, they all hold to the same standard: they’re damn hard. Konami is no rookie to the market. In fact, their new Xbox Live Arcade game, Time Pilot, is a classic from 1982, and it is an overall difficult game. However, while most shooters like Gradius, another Konami title, are linear (restricted to lateral or horizontal movement only), Time Pilot moves in 360 degrees, similar to games like Geometry Wars.
The likeness to Geometry Wars ends with the view and general movement, however. Where Geometry Wars utilizes the right analog stick to fire in any direction, your craft in Time Pilot can only shoot in the direction in which it’s facing. This makes things a trite more difficult, especially since the craft moves sluggishly in 45-degree increments. It is like racing the Indy 500 with a Cadillac, the Fleetwood Brougham.
There’s really no explainable reason how your craft moves through Time so that you can inevitably save it from destruction. It’s like the age-old question: “How exactly does posi-trac on a Plymouth work? It just does.” Actually, it’s the use of clutches and applied pressure that makes a limited-slip differential work, but I’m still not sure why you start off in 1910, fighting bi-planes and then moving up to current years fighting jets...and beyond again to fighting UFO aircraft that question the developer’s sanity. There’s a row of aircraft in the lower left-hand corner of the screen that acts as a timer. Once all the aircraft are missing from the bar, then it’s time to move on from your current "Time" (era). There’s a “boss” type of craft (though it takes only a bit more than a regular craft to kill) you must find and shoot down to move on to the next point in Time. It must house the Flux Capacitor or something.
The standard game type (the stock 1982 version) received no refinement. Bullets look like golf balls, bombs look like lipstick, and the aircraft are only just discernable in their type and nature. However, the new Xbox Live Arcade version sports a slightly higher resolution and some other upgrades, such as the smoke trail left behind the heat-seeking missiles so you can track them easier. The backgrounds are likewise just as simple as the rest of the graphics in standard play, portraying only simple, blocky clouds and such. There’s no sense of height or depth. The new game mode patches things up with some nice layered clouds, decent explosions, and smoking aircraft. Sound effects are also minimal in the standard mode, and you’re better off just streaming music to your 360 or playing what you have ripped to your hard drive, and that’s still true enough for the slightly better sounds you get in the new mode. It’s not like you get any warning as the enemy craft move in from all directions of the very limited screen anyway. They come in at any angle and you have to move in the menial increments to shoot them down. That’s not to say there’s no skill involved, quite the contrary, but it’s still so unrefined that this game is barely worth the 400 MS Point purchase. Perhaps that’s why shooters like Gradius held the market over this barely-known game; the control is simple, yet effective. It feels like Konami got over-zealous on this game, trying to define the genre back in 1982, but failing, not in their vision, but in execution, due only to the technology limitations. Being able to move in 45-degree increments only is not the high point of this game.
Regardless of the game type, standard or the new version, it’s still a simple, old game. The only redeeming factors for this title are the astoundingly easy Live Achievements and the online (co-op and versus) modes. And it’s difficult, taking skill to really advance, yet it’s easy to pick up and play. There are much better games in this genre, but not so much on XBLA. Time Pilot is only a fix for pure boredom or if you just love old school shooters... or if you’re after some easy Achievement points. Continue to visit VGCore.com for the latest news and updates to the Xbox Live Arcade and your favorite gaming console.
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| The Core Score |
Overall
5.5 |
| Fun |
|
6 |
| Gameplay |
|
5 |
| Graphics |
|
4 |
| Audio |
|
4 |
| Replay |
|
6 |
|
| Kid Safe Score |
| 8 Great |
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| |
Old School top down airplane fighter game. Some explosions and gun fire, not too graphic. |
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