LOS ANGELES — With the 25th anniversary of “Top Gun,” Double 6 and Paramount are working on a new downloadable game.
This time they are working with Jack Epp Jr., the original author of “Top Gun” to make sure the game stays true to the original, Academy Award-winning film.
The developers are heavily skewing the game to the Indian Ocean mission at the end of the movie, and they are using the Top Gun school to get the players acquainted with the game.
The game has two modes, a story mode where you attempt to accomplish missions, following the story, and a “Horde Mode.” In Horde mode, it’s an endless wave of enemies that keep coming. You have to kill as many as possible and get the best score you can.
The game included a few interesting unique features inspired from real life fighter experiences. They animated the wings on the F-14 to move like the real ones do. The wings move in and out depending on the speed of the craft. They also created a tunnel vision similar to what real pilots experience before they black out. This was interesting when playing with the game, because when you pull High G’s, the sides of the screen go black, and you can only see a circle in the center. This creates an interesting counter to going too fast or being too hard on the stick.
They added a special mode Called "CFI" which allows the player to keep constant focus on the selected enemy. This allows the player to pull the maneuvers from the movie. This will move the game into a third person point of view for a short period. The game was fun in an arcade style. The Missiles regenerate so even though it is being limited you aren’t limited to only what the plane can launch with. That would make the horde mode too hard.
The graphics are pretty simple, consistent with other downloadable games. They’ve stuck with the original F-14 Tomcat fighter, which was retired by the Navy a few years ago. It’s good to see the Tomcat live on.
With a dearth of flight simulation games lately, you should definitely give this a go.
Top Gun is a quick one. We got our first look at it at E3 this year, and it’s already releasing in July, exclusively for the PlayStation Network.
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