Slovakia was a dark chapter of this game. After one of DeeDee’s friends died in France, Tommy, who was basically her caretaker started to drink again. Of course, you couldn’t tell this bothers DeeDee based on her voice. I’m sorry if I’m insulting anyone, but at this point, I seriously think the main character would be better if she didn’t have any audio, just subtitles. At least then, you could imagine the appropriate tone and emotions.

AIr-to-ground missions might actually be more common than dog fights. I haven’t really counted, though.

In any case, Slovakia wasn’t too difficult, but I did get a few levels that were harder to deal with. It was quite long to, so it took me close to two hours to complete it. I’ve also unlocked my first jet fighter in this chapter, which instantly became my favorite plane in the game. It’s extremely fast and extremely agile, so you can use it to basically run circles around any other plane in the game.

Now it’s time to go back to the Balkans, and to the final chapter.

Operation Overlord was a bit harder than my missions in Poland. Well, one of the missions was harder – the one where I needed to drop of medical supplies, mainly because the only planes I could pick were the crappy ones. Other than that one mission, everything was cleared on the first try.

Apparently, it’s sometimes a pilot’s job to cause train collisions.

Again, I’m really, really hating the voice actor for DeeDee, but the rest are good enough. I’m also starting to dislike the length inflation. Some of these missions really aren’t needed to progress the story or the game. As it is, the game is probably about three times longer than it had to be. Not much I can do about that, though.

Next up – Slovakia!

After getting some stability and organizing some things around my work and living place, I’ve finally managed to squeeze in an hour of gaming. Air Conflicts was as good a game as any to do this with, so I managed to clear the fourth chapter – Operation Belt.

While there are slideshows between some missions, most of the time, all you get is this screen.

It was easy, for the most part, with no losses and only a few close calls. As usual, the voice acting of the main character is atrocious, but the rest of the cast is decent enough. I’ve been communicating some more with Night Owl, and I’ve met another one of DeeDee’s father’s army buddies, who told me a bit more about the legendary pilot.

I’ve also unlocked two new planes, one of which I like a lot for its speed and agility. It lacks firepower, though, so I won’t be using it too often.

The Fall Blau chapter was relatively easy to get through. As far as I can remember, I managed to beat all of the missions on my first try. It also wasn’t extremely interesting. Luckily, the third chapter, Operation Black, took place in Yugoslavia, during the battle for Neretva, which made extremely interesting for me, what with me being a Croat.

Again, they took some liberties with the story, but also added historic events into it. Overall, I like how it’s progressing and the only real complaint I have about the game is the atrocious voice work of the main character. There’s no chance in hell she’s 14 and there’s no way that accent is real. Also, I think she’s a robot, because I have yet to detect any emotion.

This newer plane quickly became my favorite – agile and strong!

Other than that, the battles are fun and simple, the planes vary enough to have a point and recently, the game introduced RPG-like stats which I upgrade after every mission. So far, I’ve upgraded my agility completely, making my planes more mobile, and I’m now upgrading my Luck, which increases the chance of critical shots. Critical shots basically kill the enemy plane instantly, so I figured this would be my best option to make the game easier to get through.

Chapter four is named “Operation Belt” and it takes place in Poland, it seems. I don’t remember this Operation from my history class, but there’s a Wikipedia entry for it, so it definitely is real. I’m looking forward to clearing that one as well.

Right now, I’m still trying to figure out what else to play. I think I might try getting access to and clearing The Chest on the Binding of Isaac, just so I can count the Wrath of the Lamb expansion as completed to.

I think an Indie Gala bundle is responsible for me owning this Air Conflict game. I’m not the type who would buy a game of this subgenre willingly, but I’m thinking the bundle either contained other games I was interested in, or it was simply too big and too cheap to pass up.

In any case, Air Conflict: Secret Wars is an arcade flying action game, whatever the official genre name is. I’m tagging it simply as “action” for the purposes of this blog, since it will probably be the only game of the subgenre I’ll ever play. The game isn’t bad, but it isn’t extremely good either. I probably won’t be clearing in in just a day or two, since it’s a bit longer and I’m not that extremely into it to invest to big a chunk of time in it.

Lens-flare makes everything look so much nicer.

Based on how well you do on your missions, you get extra “stars” which unlock new planes. I’m not sure how I did relatively speaking, but I managed to unlock my first extra plane near the end of the first chapter. Other than that, there isn’t much to the game. You get objectives and you clear them – that’s about it.I played for an hour or so and managed to complete the first chapter of the campaign – Siege of Tobruk. There are seven chapters in total. The second is called Fall Blau and takes place in Azerbaijan, I think. The game, it seems, takes you through some notable WWII events, but from a fictional perspective of a young girl, the daughter of a legendary war pilot, with some piloting skills of her own.

As I said, I won’t be playing this one intensively, but I’m hoping to clear it within a week or two of short sessions. Right now, I’m trying to decide what other game to play in parallel.