And while
WarJetz is by no means a shining beacon of gameplay, it's nonetheless entertaining for a while. The single-player game is probably too repetitive for most players out there, so the multiplayer is where people are going to find their fun; for what it's worth, the game does multiplayer nicely. The single-player campaign isn't too bad either, although most people would tire of it quickly. And the controls are actually very tight for an arcade flight combat game.
The game doesn't even attempt to make a semblance of a plot. You're an up-and-coming player in the World Destruction League, and it's up to you to blow up lots of crap, win lots of Bux, and in general cause chaos. The single-player campaign starts off with you picking one of three locations to call home: Panama, the Rhine River valley, or Thailand. Each has their own specialty vehicle. After you best them on their own turf, you can move on to bigger and better opponents, in places like Antarctica and New York.
The fights themselves are usually fairly simple when it comes to objectives. One of the common ones is a basic version of Capture The Flag; you simply have to capture as many of the enemy's flags as possible. You don't have any to be captured, so your job is basically to stay alive and best the bad guys. Another common one is the destruction of some number of 'objects'--zeppelins, boats, actual opponents, whatever. And you'll often have to 'make a run for the Bux', scooping up the cash around the playfield before the other team gets more money than you.
You control a single fighter, although you can switch between it and another by picking up a special token. Each fighter has two weapons--a 'gun' and a 'special weapon', both of which differ depending on the craft that you choose. While the peashooter can't be upgraded, each level contains a number of yellow orbs that boost the power of your special weapon, often to epic proportions. You also have a bomb, which you can use to shell buildings and other ground targets with relative ease. I found this generally superfluous, although there are times that it's useful to use that instead of just shooting something; as a rule, though, whatever your bombs can destroy, your main guns can as well.
The various craft all have a number of moves that they can do. Besides steering, you can do loops, U-turns, and either rolls or strafes with a flick of the right stick. This ease of control means you can zoom around the battlefields with relative ease.
There are a number of multiplayer modes, each of them a variation on things seen in the Campaign mode: collect money, destroy your opponents, and so on. The game only supports one other player at a time, but there can be computer controlled opponents as well.
While this is all well and good, the execution ends up leaving something to be desired. The battlefields are generally huge, but there's only so much fun one can have by destroying everything in a level. The AI is generally either really dumb or really good, tailing you or completlely ignoring you. The fact that you can always buy new men with Bux means that dying isn't as bad as it usually is in a game of this sort, and it leads to some crazy suicide tactics when you don't feel like arsing with strategy. It's not so much that the game itself is bad; it's just that it never really 'gels'. It's amusing, but nothing I'd throw back in my PS2 unless someone asked for it.
