Game: Heroes Over Europe
Publisher/Developer: Ubisoft / Transmission Games
Genre: Flight Simulation
Verdict: One of the most average games ever created
Pros: Authentic styling and artwork, respectful of its subject matter, some good ideas, solid graphics
Cons: Baffling design decisions, poor execution of ideas, repetitive missions and gameplay, unforgiving
Heroes Over Europe is not a bad game, exactly – it’s just not a very good one. It commits one of the greatest gaming sins around: it’s instantly forgettable. Neither good enough to recommend itself, nor bad enough to sear itself into the memory, it occupies the middle ground of mediocrity. It’s fifty percent of average, three stars of normal. It’s like playing beige.
One of Newton’s laws of motion states that, “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Perhaps Transmission Games are huge fans of Newton’s work, as they have liberally applied this policy to every in-game feature. For every good idea in it, there’s an equally baffling one to not only negate it, but drag the game back down into obscurity. Take the “Ace Kill” feature, for example – by tracking an enemy plane for a few seconds, you can build a gauge around your targeting reticule. When the gauge is over half full, you can trigger slow-mo, and target key points on the enemy plane for a one-hit kill. Sounds great, right? Well, it isn’t. Simply put, it’s as useful as a chocolate teapot. Tracking planes to build the Ace Kill gauge is so fiddly (especially on the harder difficulties) that it’s actually quicker just to use guns, especially because you can’t shoot and build the gauge – just one or the other. As a result, a far more useful feature is the red “bead” that shows you how far to aim ahead of moving planes, allowing you to gun them down without too much fuss. The only exception is when playing on harder difficulties, as the enemy fighters are more adept in their aerial combat, and are also tougher – so if you get a chance for an Ace Kill, you should take it.
Objective markers are another source of invective. A flashing red and yellow marker denotes your primary objective, while hollow yellow markers form a doctor’s waiting room worth of targets to be dispatched. If you have a single objective, then most of the time this is fine, and holding down RB will cleverly switch the camera to show your plane relative to the objective. However, having a single objective is rarer than a bacon sandwich in a synagogue – multiple objectives are constant throughout. Here, Heroes Over Europe hamstrings you again: you aren’t free to cycle between objectives to highlight the one you want. You are given the markers in a preordained manner – which is unfortunate, given that the omniscient god of objective marking can’t prioritize properly. This means that the markers are often a confusing distraction, leaving you to hunt out the correct objectives manually, while free-wheeling through the sky like a drunken base-jumper with an inner ear infection.
So what does the game do right? The controls. On the “arcade” setting, they are easy to master, forgiving, and I hardly ever crashed into the ground. Though that sounds like a back-handed compliment, but given my flying skills, it’s really not. Graphics aren’t too badly textured, even up close (although towns in particular look very blocky), and the planes are well modeled and authentic. The voice work is pretty good too, although the word “mate” was used more times than during a ride through the London East End in a black cab. British people do use it, but not at the end of every single sentence, mate.
The start menus and artwork are also fine, and tie in well with the authentic black and white WW2 footage used to introduce every mission. It lends weight to the serious subject matter, and perfectly captures the public information and propaganda feel of the wireless broadcasts and poster campaigns of the time. The debate of whether games based on real conflicts are exploitative often comes up when reviewing such titles – Heroes Over Europe never feels cheap or unworthy. It successfully manages to walk a fine line between the tone of the jaunty Biggles novels of the 1930s and the overwhelming darkness and tragedy of a war the Allies were losing until America stepped in.
The combat is unfussy and allows you to engage in some epic dogfights, recreating famous chapters and decisive battles from the war. There are fourteen missions in total, and these are broken down into four sub-sections, with each of these giving you a role as a distinct pilot or crew. Escorting a vast fleet of bombers towards Berlin is something to be savored – Jerry doesn’t like it up ‘im. There is a suitably grand mix of locales, too – you will be involved in everything from desperate attempts to save London during the Blitz to hammering the Hun’s ground forces in the Battle of the Bulge.
The simple approach starts to grate, however. The repetitive missions drag on ad infinitum, to the point where you just want to start doing something different. To make matters worse, endless new “surprise” objectives pop up just when you think you’ve won the day. Constantly moving the goalposts made me feel like Heroes Over Europe was padding out the game in a very cheap fashion. This leads me on to another huge failing: checkpoints. They are ridiculously sparse in places, and controller-smashingly infuriating on the harder difficulties. You can shoot wave after wave of German bombers out of the sky, only for one solitary plane to make it through, bomb a target, make you fail your mission, and wipe all your progress from the last fifteen minutes. This is compounded by the truly gobsmacked bewilderment I suffered when I realized checkpoints don’t save your progress for later – if you don’t complete the mission in one sitting, you have to start from scratch next time you fire up the game. WHY? Some missions will take you well in excess of half an hour (more like an hour on the harder settings), so what is gained by punishing anyone other than the hardcore gamer? It makes mission completion a feat of endurance gaming, rather than a fun exercise in what is so nearly quite a good game.
Perhaps I am being overly harsh in my criticisms. Perhaps Transmission Games are making a satirical statement about the blandness of many games – indeed, it is a testament to Heroes Over Europe that it manages so successfully to remain a halfway house of the humdrum while simultaneously being utterly grueling to play.
My advice? Buy a copy of IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey, if you need a WW2 flight sim. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than this. As far as playing this again, I’d sooner paint over my eyeballs in a neutral color and shout quotes from Dambusters at my telly. At least it would make for a good anecdote. I could hesitantly recommend this for rental, but purchase it at your peril. This is less Heroes Over Europe, more Snow Camouflage on a White Background.
Popularity: unranked [?]
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