BOMB: Who let the dogfight? (PC)

Take an arcade shooter like Crimson Skies and give an almost cartoony, comic-strip style, and what you get is BOMB: Who let the dogfight? After spending a year in the cocoon of Early Access, the full version of the game emerged in all its glory. Whether the game is as good as it looks is something you’re going to have to keep reading to find out for yourself.

Daredevils for Hire

The game’s playable antihero is Marcel “La Moustache” Gaston, a pilot who likes to get drunk. He’s highly reminiscent of Baloo from TaleSpin (and according to the developer, this is by no means accidental), or the main character from Porco Rosso. His sidekick Takeshi provides him with new missions. Between missions, the characters’ faces appear in a comic-book style. The gameplay is for the most part all about completing missions in the simulator part of the game to earn money to invest in better aircraft, weapons, and gear. These upgrades allow you to complete more difficult missions, where you can earn even more money. Nothing new so far. But what’s really cool is the setting – a tropical island paradise that for some reason seems to be inhabited primarily by outlaws, where various factions and interests meet, not often peaceably, either. And since “La Moustache” has a hard time passing up a good fight, there’s never a dull moment in the story.

Aircraft

The control system is a keyboard-and-mouse arrangement, though it’s not the best I’ve ever seen, and you’ll probably have to reassign certain keys. You’re better off taking out the old joystick. If you’re no longer used to how hard old-time dogfight games were (or you never were in the first place), you might want to try playing on Easy. This should make taking off and landing a bit easier, and keeping the can in the air isn’t all that hard in any event. Using the mouse, on the other hand, is imprecise and clunky, even with a high-end gaming mouse.

The graphics in BOMB: Who let the dogfight? are hit or miss. The cel-shading effects are something else, and combined with the comic style of the characters, the game really has a distinctive look all its own. Water effects are also nice to look at at. On the other hand, the building and aircraft models leave a lot to be desired, which detracts from the game’s overall graphics. The sky could have looked a bit better, too – this is just one place where they could have done with a little less retro. DirectX 11 is pretty much state of the art, though; you can also switch to OpenGL if you prefer, too.

Flying Paperboy

Not all the missions are dogfights with your aircraft’s built-in machine guns – you also have to distribute flyers in each mission, but not everybody’s keen on having junk mail dumped on their island, and they’ll shoot you down for it. You’ll also have to bring cargo from Point A to Point B, fighting off air pirates on the way. But you can also use rockets to defend yourself – or to rain hell down on ground targets. But there isn’t all that much variety from mission to mission – the only real surprises are in the story itself, and even then there’s not that many of them. And with just 17 relatively short missions to play through, the game isn’t really all that long, either.

Multiplayer mode allows you to fight aerial battles with up to 15 other players, either by joining a server or creating your own. When I played the game, however, only one server was up. Skirmish Mode allows you to start the game mid-air and shoot computer-controlled enemies out of the sky.