Mini Review – MySims Sky Heroes

Air combat

Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em cos we’re going down.

Rich

When the demo for MySims Sky Heroes turned up on Xbox Live, I fired it up for all of three minutes before snorting with derision and turning it off.  You see, I’m bored of the whole arcade flight combat genre.  Ace Combat was good for a while (it’s a load of overly emo Japanese shit now though) and everything else has been a tedious reinvention of that (save for Blazing Angels II which is quite brilliant).

Structure's still intact and they still have power.

The way to reignite any interest in the genre certainly isn’t to bring out a new game and fill it full of cutesy Sims bollocks but that’s what EA have done and, well, I quite like it.  Not the cutesy shit.  Indeed, given that the entire story is played out in Gameboy/DS style text panels that you have to press A to skip through for fucking AGES between missions, I lost interest in whatever the plot is several gameplay hours ago.

The gameplay however is pretty tidy.  Missions are split between dogfights (you and two fucking awful AI teammates who nick your kills versus three enemies) and races.  The dogfights can be frustrating but the controls and power-ups are decent enough and winning a dogfight can be pretty satisfying.  Getting a gold medal (being the best player) in these fights can be frustrating though.  Especially when you finish second despite having three more kills than the nearest AI.

Races are pretty much Mario Kart in the air.  The power-ups (the same ones you get in dogfights) are useful but not overpowered and the controls are even better suited to this mode.  Rubberbanding bollocks cheating AI dogshit can be an issue but smart use of powerups, and learning the courses, can negate this.

Sky Heroes isn’t great but it is a solid, enjoyable game.  It’s far too difficult for young ‘uns (who will be the only people able to tolerate what passes for a story here) and is a tad too repetitive for its own good but if you want a brainless sky shooter with a satisfying challenge you could do worse than pick this up in a couple of weeks when the price inevitably drops under twenty quid. 

5/10