This review contains SPOILERS! Click to expand.
This work ahead of us belongs to Sony's project “Playstation Talents Alliances”, and is the latest work by Wildsphere, a prolific Valencian studio.
I am going to allow myself to make a small subjective chronicle of my encounter with this game.
Since it is a game devoid of violence or ***, I decided to play it in the living room, with the family around. Before long, my 6-year-old
This work ahead of us belongs to Sony's project “Playstation Talents Alliances”, and is the latest work by Wildsphere, a prolific Valencian studio.
I am going to allow myself to make a small subjective chronicle of my encounter with this game.
Since it is a game devoid of violence or ***, I decided to play it in the living room, with the family around. Before long, my 6-year-old daughter was curious and came over. After a phase, he fully understood the mechanics of the game and began to make proposals on how to face the following challenges. Shortly after, my wife arrived and sat next to us on the sofa. History repeated itself. In this way, the three of us spent more than ten phases together planning strategies and progressing in the game, until it was time to go to bed.
History - Flying Soldiers Analysis
On this occasion, we will lead some small commandos of newly hatched soldier birds through a dangerous terrain full of obstacles and deadly traps, with the mission of obtaining the medals distributed along the route and ensuring that all the chicks arrive alive.
Visual Style - Flying Soldiers Analysis
It is clearly inspired by the United States of the 50s. Those who have seen movies like "Back to the Future (Part 1)", "The Iron Giant", or more recently "Planet 51", will understand what I mean. And within the style of this era, they have focused on the warmongering cut, with projection screens and sepia films to explain the plans, military fonts and symbols and logos in the purest Air Force style.
And yet the gameplay is the most colorful. We find very nice characters, in bright colors, in cardboard boxes, nails and fixo backgrounds.
They have managed to transport the military elements very well to the world of parody, they have achieved that a game that started from a very high contrast between the seriousness, the harshness and the cruelty of the army, on the one hand, and the beauty, purity and lo fun of nature on the other, combine perfectly, giving a very homogeneous, coherent result and, although I repeat myself, nice and fun.
Music - Flying Soldiers Analysis
In this case, the decision was easy and they have not risked: Simple music of a military nature, with drum rolls and typical instruments. And that's fine with me.
This is a thinking game, and as a thinking game, you should have as few distractions as possible, so the sound should not distract or distract you.
However, the music can become repetitive, especially if, like me, you repeat the phases over and over again to save all the troops and collect all the medals.
Game System - Flying Soldiers Analysis
Do you remember "Lemmings", that classic game from the 90s where some nice characters advanced without stopping towards certain death? Well, let's start from that idea to describe the gameplay of Flying Soldiers.
When the starting gun is fired, the feathered protagonists will run in a straight line until they die or reach the end. Usually the first.
And how can we avoid this fateful outcome? We will achieve this by putting obstacles and resources in the way that divert the trajectory of the soldiers before the race begins.
As for time, we have everything we need. We can put on and take off, change places, reposition, think, go forward, backward, get closer, move away and do whatever we think is convenient, and when we are ready, just press and hold a button to start the show.
And if we are finally not satisfied with the result, we can repeat each phase as many times as we want, without limit.
It should be said that the playing field is divided into squares, in the purest Tower Defense style, but with the aim of advancing and not stopping an advance.
As for the resources at our disposal, we will have all the necessary to complete each mission in an excellent way, that is, saving all the soldiers and collecting all the medals. The problem is that, in each mission, the available resources will be different, and the amount will also be different, so the combination between them will have to be carefully considered. As a general rule, if you are missing, you are overlooking something, but if you have too much, too.
So we will see a wheel that indicates which items we can use and a number that indicates how many items we can use. At first, this confused me a bit, because I thought that the number indicated the number of items of each type, but no, they are the total number of items.
I'll put a practical case to be clearer: Suppose we have a mat and fence available, and the number is 7.
We could put 7 mats, or 7 fences or 3 fences and 4 mats, for example.
As for the soldiers, we have 3 types, the basic soldier, which has nothing special, the Commando, which is faster and activates buttons and the Special Forces, which are slow, do not jump and can roll to break walls.
So that's the big picture. At the beginning of each level we will see how many assets we must save, we will see how many characters there are and of what type, we will see the circuit and the resources available, and with that, forward!
Control System - Flying Soldiers Analysis
The control system is very simple, and in case someone forgets it, it is present on the screen all the time, so it is very difficult to have problems with it. In addition, WildSphere has had a couple of successes to highlight, such as that at the end of the turn, you have to keep a button pressed to give the order to finish.
It could be a click and that's it, but it would be very easy to click by mistake. To avoid this, they could put up an "are you sure?" and fix it. However, I find this solution to be much more agile and much less intrusive.
And the same happens if you want to abandon the mission, keep a button pressed, and go back to the beginning.
Thumbs up for this decision.
Replayability - Flying Soldiers Analysis
The replayability of this title is very limited, in the sense that it is very easy to repeat a level over and over again to get everything, but once you have all the levels one hundred percent, there is no incentive to redo everything again. So actually, by the time you've completed the game, you may have replayed it dozens of times.
And on the other hand, the moment you remember what to do on each of the playing fields, it already becomes a series of mechanical acts of putting resources on the screen.
Conclusions - Flying Soldiers Analysis
It is a very addictive game and it is fun to play. It's easy to find yourself repeating stages over and over to get all the medals while saving all the troops.
Also, although it is not multiplayer, it has the gift of sitting the family together in front of the console to play all together, and that is not achieved by everyone.
Trailer - Flying Soldiers
Scores - Flying Soldiers Analysis
History (2/10): The history is practically non-existent, it is an ornament placed to justify the mechanics of the game. In fairness, you don't need it either.
Playability (9/10): A comfortable system, well thought out, easy to handle and difficult to improve.
Graphics (8/10): In general, everything is very good, only some minor details could have been improved, but nothing that affects the game experience.
Sound (8/10): Very adequate melodies and effects, it simply lacked variety.
Design (8/10): Designing a game like this is quite a challenge that in general saves very well. It only sins on the difficulty curve, which for almost half the game is very easy and then suddenly rises.
Pros: A good game, very addictive, easy to understand and play, perfect to spend a while or to combine with longer games.
Cons: Difficulty curve could be better adjusted and can be made a bit short.
You can purchase the game directly from PlayStation Network .
We also recommend that you try Roki's analysis.
This analysis was writted by Eloy Castillo for www.gamelx.es