Top Gun

Rating ESRB: Everyone Genre action Publisher Mastiff External Links Official Mastiff Games Website

For the first flight simulator on the Nintendo DS, they did not choose to release an original game to break in the system. No, they chose an airplane movie that is 20 years old. Granted, "Top Gun" is a good movie, but they shouldn't have picked something that was already published on the Nintendo Entertainment System.

First of all, the controls in Top Gun are passable, at best. The D-pad directs the plane with the traditional inverse movement, while X and Y adjust the speed of the airplane. Pressing A shoots your machine gun, which can essentially be set on auto-fire since you have no set amount of ammo. Lastly, B locks onto enemies to shoot homing missiles, whereas the L button shoots straight missiles.

"Yes, but how will my touch screen be used?" you ask? You might use it to change camera angles, but beyond that, it is only used to annoy you, my friends. When the start up menu appears you have to touch the screen to continue, and then after that you rarely use to it navigate menu screens. During combat, it is never used and it certainly becomes frustrating once you have to constantly pull out your stylus just to continue through the menu.

Once you've pointlessly touched the screen to begin Top Gun, you'll see a variety of options. Both single-player modes, Campaign and Free Flight, are very similar in that they offer a selection of missions to progress through. The main difference is that in Campaign mode, you are able to choose between different characters from the movie, like Maverick and Iceman. Sadly, the character you choose essentially has no effect on the gameplay or the story (of which there is none).

Additionally, these missions can prove to be exceedingly frustrating. While you have a damage meter on your bottom screen, apparently your airplane is set to explode upon impact. If your wings even slightly touch a wall or the ground, you automatically explode. No inflicted damage or impaired flight - just BOOM. This immediately becomes stressful in the second mission where your objective is to fly through a canyon.

However, the gameplay does not get any better with multiplayer. As with any game, it's kind of fun killing your friends, but Top Gun takes the defensive maneuvers out of dog fighting. There are no barrel rolls or crazy flips to avoid missiles: just go as fast as you can. Honestly, it is just as fun killing the computer players and multiplayer doesn't add much of anything to the game.

Of course with poor gameplay usually comes poor graphics and sound, so Top Gun has plenty of that to go around. Aside from the map being conveniently placed on the lower screen, it seems that this game could've been created for the Game Boy Advance without much difference. Regrettably, because of what we've seen from games such as Metroid Prime: Hunters, the graphics in Top Gun simply pale in comparison. To add to this unfortunate mixture, the music sounds like it could've been ripped straight from the NES version.

Top Gun can be slightly fun, but it is brought down by all of the minor annoyances and low production values. It seems like it doesn't take much time to create a flight simulator (with no touch screen controls) and slap on the "Top Gun" logo. Do yourself a favor and avoid this game unless you desperately need something to hold you over until a better flight simulator releases for the Nintendo DS.