Tom Clancy’s Air Combat

Tom Clancy seems intent on conquering the videogame realm, piece by piece. First he annexed a small subgenre, the submarine sim, with Red Storm Rising, and then he gradually expanded his domain, taking more genres under his command: Shadow War took turn based strategy, Splinter Cell took the stealthy sneak’em up, Ghost Recon took tactical shooters, and Rainbow Six took first person shooters. Now his domination is almost complete and he will soon have conquered the world, in Endwar. Only the skies remain free. We hope to get any helicopter game from Tom Clancy in future.

Not for long, though, as Clancy has ordered the ranks of his Romanian developers to mobile. Clancy believes that the nation-state is doomed and that as war fare develops the countries of the world will come to employ mercenaries rather than professional standing armies. With private armies come private military airforces such as Firehawk, which is where Air Combat comes in.

You get to fly over 60 futuristic and contemporary plans including the F-I5E Strike Eagle and Rafale, subduing your enemies with a Cobra or kulbit (a complicated Russian air maneuver). The action takes place in a variety of near future environments and the focus is definitely on realism. Look at the cover and you will see the familiar Ghost Recon Advanced WarFighter HUD has made an appearance and then you will be working alongside the Ghosts from GRAW.

Thrillville: Off The Rails

It’s not an argument Thrillville seems interested in putting to bed, either. But what it does do is prove that ‘too kiddy’ isn’t always a bad thing. For a game where you have to build theme parks, it’s easy to grasp, which is both its main strength and its main weakness. There’s never a feeling of ‘oh no’ and slinking behind your sofa in fear when confronted with a new plot of land to fill with rides and stalls.

Everything is simple to set up and tweak, so it’s not long before you’re fleecing eager punters near the entrance with overpriced balloons, hiring cheerleaders to dance and setting up a hot dog stand right next to your nausea including rollercoaster. Just for kicks. Yet it’s also too easy, which is where the ‘too kiddy’ tag becomes detrimental to Thrillville and its really a very fun game. There’s not much subtlety involved beyond building, building and more building.

Often, when the groundwork is done, you just sit on your pot of gold as money accumulates beneath your bum. While Thrillville offers plenty of options to distract you from being idle, letting you take part in your rides or even flirt with your customers, you’d rather be doing something a little more worthwhile with your time. it doesn’t have the spinning plates chaos of its genre stablemates, which both makes it more relaxing to play but also some shallow.