Games
Project Sylpheed for XBOX 360
What does the future hold? Space, the final frontier will surely be our new home if we are to survive as a race. Will we wear funky twotone all-in-ones and have it off with sexy aliens from a neighbouring solar system a la Captain Kirk? Will we disco dance in tin foil boiler suits and fraternise with our goofy robot helpers a la Buck Rogers? Or will we, as so many films, TV shows and games predict, be suffer under a cruel dictatorial federation only to be freed by a small dissident rebel army. Clearly peace is out of the question. Shame.
Project Sylpheed is one such game. I can’t give you a plot synopsis because I reall. The game is really half movie and half game. While they have their name all over the box Square Enix (the guys behind Final Fantasy) didn’t actually make Sylpheed, they just published it. There is the heavy dependence on full motion video cutscenes though, which seem to be employed to distract you from the fact that the fact that the game is a bit pants.
It’s a 3d Flight Simulator yet despite having all the benefits of much more formidable hardware, it is only slightly more visually pleasing than Starfox command which came out on the nintendo consoles in various guises. You play some yu-gi-oh lookin fool who has to save the federation from the rebel army or vice versa, I wasn’t really paying that much attention. If I wanted to watch hours of japanese animation there’s plenty of it on the internet.
You control the ships direction with the right thumbstick and use the left thumbstick for evasion tactics when someon fires a missile at your ass. There are some aviation aids to help you too, and boy will you need them. Hold down both triggers and you engage Match Speed which allows you to maintain the same velocity of your target, making them easier to shoot. Pressing down on the Thumbstick locks you on a target so you always have it in sight, which is useful when you’re taking out larger spaceships.
As well as your standard weapons on each trigger you can employ 3 special attacks. Phase 1 will fire all of your equipped weapons in a continuous blast. Phase 2 jumps up your shield and turns you into a space age battering ram for a short period. And Phase 3 slows down time making turning those pesky rebels into sitting ducks.
To refuel your aircraft you can fly past the rather unoriginally named Acropolis – your mother ship. Press the action button when you’re nearby and your shields and ammo are automatically recharged. This is pretty important because even if you’re used the nauseating weightlessness of 3d flight simulators, Sylpheed is a really tough game. The first two missions settle you in and then you’re eyeballs are stress-tested by a swarm of lights, explosions, warnings and indicators. Which be so bad if the game wasn’t so repetitive.
Yes, you can upgrade your weapons in the hangar and equip your craft with guns as big as planets. Yes, you can research and develop new weapons in the hangar and earn medals for performing certain tasks throughout the game. But the rest of the gameplay is very much the same thing over and over. Fly, shoot, listen to your buddies talk crap in your ear, rinse and repeat. There isn’t even a multiplayer for extended play.
The music is a forgettable yet bearable mix of Orbital and tension beds from 1980s action shows. The rest of the sound is pretty good though, especially explosions and the sound effects of the passing aircraft if you’re playing on a 5.1 surround sound system.
But this really is a case of a bad movie masquerading as an even worse game, unless there’s nothing on the telly, there’s little to reason to stick with project sylpheed for more than a few hours..
