Game:

AirForce Delta Storm (2001)

Duration: 7:38

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Airforce Delta 2, is an arcade-style flight simulator, released exclusively on Xbox; the game is now fully playable on Xemu, and at up to 5x the native resolution, but dynamic shadows aren’t yet supported.

The game continues the original’s arcadey tradition of much speed and action, but with a larger list of aircraft, real and fictional, available to be acquired throughout. It features more missions as well, albeit, and unlike its predecessor, many here, being not only lackluster, but exact duplicates of each other. Adding insult to the injury, a bunch of mandatory side-ops, that suck many, many hairy dongs of colossal size and unbelievable diameter.

For short, Delta 2 goes for quantity over quality, and that’s not good. Level design took a major hit, and nothing of value really stands out.

Lagging, too, behind the original, is this most disappointing, uninspired soundtrack, lacking any sort of distinction and character, not fitting any level in particular, and all blending together as a singular mass of absolute mediocrity.

Presentation has taken a hit so massive, you’d thing the developers ran out of budget at some point. Menus are chunky and not pretty, the world map’s convoluted and messy, 3D briefing animations are gone, the hangar, previously, an exterior, modeled in-game, and populated with sexy models of each jet, has been reduced to an ugly, gray, set of pre-rendered 2D, scrollable images in this sequel.

The visuals, though, have been improved for the most part; water is bright and reflective, planes have been geometrically enhanced, models cast self-shadows, afterburner effects never looked this good before (nor since), explosions are delightful to look at, cloud sprites are breathtaking, and weather conditions affect how shiny a jet can look.

On the other hand, the sun, made from dynamic light rays in the original, has been downgraded to 2 overlapping transparent textures, and geometry, when flying above the clouds, has been simplified.

In-game mechanics haven’t changed much, if at all; jets can't shoot more than 2 missiles at once, even though, many can be seen carrying up to 4 and above. Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with that, but allowing for such, could’ve added an extra layer of difficulty and ammo management to the gameplay, enhancing it in the process.

Flight model’s been modified slightly, neither for the best, nor for the worse, and that is fine; each jet feels distinctively different from each other, and that’s that.

As they say, don’t fix what isn’t broken.

Enemy fire has been tweaked, but their behavior hasn't changed much. Machine gun bullets have had their physics completely rehauled, and heavily simplified, but made far more accurate and satisfying to use than in the previous title.

Overall, this sequel is much larger in size, maybe even in scope, when compared to the first game; it boasts an unprecedented 59 missions, and about 80 playable jets (depending on region), 58 of these modeled after their real counterparts, and 22 being either love letters/replicas of old Konami game’s spaceships or fantasy jets inspired by the real deal.

For comparison, Delta 1 was 20 levels long and had 31 real playable planes.

Now, the more aircraft the better, the more levels however, not always for the best, as has been proven here. Delta 2’s repetition, copy/pasted objectives and maps, lack of proper level design, lack of character to it, poor musical choices, and just plain ugly menus, really take out of the experience, diminishing its replay value big time.

Controls are fun and intuitive though, in-game visuals are also impressive for the time, so there's that.

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