Top Gun 2

Top Gun 2 – Flipping the bird to all other flight sims...

Now just about every hot blooded male and female has seen Top Gun, but for those who haven’t, you must clearly have missed out on some great action and tear jerking moments with Goose getting nailed by... his cockpit window!

Sorry for spoiling that for you but you were bound to find out and as it doesn’t really have any bearing on this game, too bad!

About the only direct correlation to the movie and this game are the planes and some fairly loosely resembling characatured ‘crew’ in the briefings. Otherwise, this is just a pretty basic flight sim with the ‘Danger Zone’ theme tune thrown in for some good measure.

Movement is made by tilting the handset in the desired way i.e. left and right, towards you to climb and down/away to descend.  When you pull up or push down repeatedly you will cause your aircraft to stay high or low in the screen. Additionally you can combine all the above directions to pull off some dramatic evasive manoeuvres.

Picking the right plane for the mission is quite crucial as they all have different strengths. The F-14 has an afterburner and metal storm, F-16 missile barrage and shield and the F-18 has flares and smartbomb specials. To activate these simply tap the appropriate switch/lever indicated on the screen. These, once used, take a few moments to become active again and you will otherwise have to rely on your machine gun and rockets to send your opponents to the four winds in a ball of fire.

Enemies come at you from all angles (high, low , in front and from behind). Your machine guns will carve through jets you’re following where as rockets will be better used at jets in the distance coming towards you (although you can use either of these at any time).

Your rockets are infinite as are your machine guns bullets’ – which is good to know if you thought it was going to be like the real thing. The points you score will depend on the accuracy but ultimately survival and making sure you down as many opponents (including the end of level boss) is the most important thing.

So does this game earn its wings or should it be grounded? Well, in honesty it doesn’t really push all the buttons as hard or as fast as I’d like. The theme tune gives way to some heavy metal band (which you can purchase the songs from for an additional fee) and the flight experience seems quite tame – resembling the old handheld racing games from the 80’s. Providing you have an itchy trigger finger and don’t mind swinging your iPod/Phone around like a loon ‘marking’ your targets, you will no doubt have a field-day with this title. If however you like something a little more real and in depth then I’d suggest looking elsewhere. Sorry Iceman, you’ll have to be my wingman!

Rating 59%

Positives

Theme tune and music from the movie

Responsive controls

Moderately addictive

A retro flying sim

Negatives

Relies too heavily on its brand rather than it being any good

There are plenty of other flight sims which offer you more all round performance

The F-16’s abilities (invincibility and rockets) blow the other two planes out of the sky

The special button next to the menu screen button can easily be pressed in the heat of the moment shutting off the game and undo all your hard work