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Just for balance

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 18 / 36
Date: May 13, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I put this reveiw in for balance. Like the other reviewers, I have not seen this game. Therefore, I would give it no stars (if I could) and don't recommend it, yet. If it is good, I will recommend it. I just hate to see these 5 star reviews from people who haven't seen the game. It is one thing for the experts to give GT3 a top review based on demos and preliminary releases. It is quite another for reviews to be solely based on wishful thinking. Give me a break. Don't submit reviews based on guesswork alone.

If you like to waste money, don't bother reading this.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 18 / 21
Date: November 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Okay, I’ve had Top Gun: Combat Zones for over a week now and while I wanted to enjoy it (...) I feel pretty comfortable telling you all that it, in fact, BLOWS. Usually, I’m willing to stick it out through long stretches of boredom, sluggish and unrealistic physics models, awkward to nearly unplayable controls, monotonous environments and unrealistic and sparse enemies long enough to get to the point where a game begins to shine, but Top Gun has two problems. First, there is already a MUCH better game available (...). Second, I don’t really believe this “game” is going to improve anywhere if I play it any more. So, now that I’ve popped it out of the PS2 and taken a deep breath and counted to ten, I can relax enough to explain why anyone over nine years old would do well to avoid this stinkbomb (...)
As usual, eyecandy is king in the world of video zealotry, so graphics first. Top Gun’s visuals are alright--at first, until you get close to the ground, where the textures are all big stinking rectangular pixels which have no place coming from the Emotion Engine inside the PS2. You don’t really see any enemy units or planes enough to be able to make a fair critique of their models, but your plane looks pretty good--at first. Until you start wondering… why is it that in the replays, the Tomcat looks like a MIG-29 Fulcrum from the front, and a Panavia Tornado from the side? And what’s up with all the PS1-looking machine gun bullets (pointy orange rectangles which fire most unmachine gun-like in a PERFECTLY STRAIGHT LINE)? Explosions, those wonderful expanding balls of devastation with which we humans are so fascinated? Check out the Academy Mission where you take out the chemical factories and you tell me if those yellow puffs of gas that seep out when your missile hits are supposed to be “explosions”. The aircraft itself flies sluggishly, but it doesn’t matter because you’ll never get into a turning dogfight anyway (read on…). Usually a flight game gives you an obsolete model to start with, like the F-4 of AC4 . Here you start with a Tomcat (admittedly an old design but still combat-effective, (...)) but it might as well be an Me 262 for all the responsiveness in the controls.

Did the game designers really think that replacing time-tested HUD concepts with video-gamey (...)would preserve the “arcade” feel and fun of this game? (...)Why did they replace the bombsight lollipop, already so well known to anyone who’s ever dropped a video bomb from any flight simulator aircraft, with this stupid third-person overhead and cartoon crosshair? This makes you crash the plane as you slowly descend from an out-of body-experience perspective. And WHY OH WHY was the targeting carat taken out in favor of this big stupid orange on the side of the screen, which you have to use in conjunction with a line graph on the bottom of the screen AND the non-scalable radar to determine whether red air is above or below you? This unmanageable arrangement makes no sense whatsoever, as it makes ACM with enemy aircraft nearly impossible. (...)It is ridiculously hard to line up on the six of even a MIG-17 Fresco in this game due to the targeting system. During one “A2A” (jeez that’s SO clever) mission the only airborne targets I could FIND were Mi-24 helicopters, and that was only because they DON’T MOVE, they just sit there like levitated tanks (which they may as well be, since they both apparently carry the exact same weapon system), waiting to get shot down. The rest of the planes were lazily circling overhead, acting like there wasn’t a US Navy fighter below hunting desperately for them while it took out all the friendly choppers. Oh, I see… the jokes on me? Could it be that the AI is actually super-intelligent, as the enemy fighters know that they don’t have to waste fuel trying to kill me because I WON’T BE ABLE TO FIND THEM?

(...) EVERY ENEMY UNIT FIRES THE SAME EXACT 60MM ORANGE-RECTANGLE CHAIN GUN AT YOU! Why bother carving out a clear approach corridor from AA fire before you take out a T-72 tank? (...)In short, it’s every bit as good as the movie it’s named after, and I hope that means there won’t be a Top Gun 2 the Game either.
(...)

ABSOLUTELY THE GREATEST GAME EVER

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 43
Date: May 19, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Top Gun is the greatest video game ever. I played a version of it when it was only 6% finished and it was tremendously fun. The graphics were fantastic, not quite as good as the NES version but thousands of times better than anything ever seen on the Atari 2600. So you know the PS2 version will just rock!... And while the gameplay wasn't quite finished, in fact the only controls up and running at the time were the select game option, I couldn't believe how addictive it was when selecting whether I wanted to choose the ACE difficulty setting, NORMAL difficulty, or TRAINING mode.... To all of you eagerly anticipating this game, I know for a fact it is worth the wait, because if the game is only nearly half as good as the load up screens, we are all in for a treat. So keep those five star reviews coming, this game deserves them.

Top Gun hits rock bottom

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 10
Date: December 17, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Well first the good, since this wont take long. The graphics are decent, I' not too picky but I found the graphics adequate to that I expected.
Now the bad. first of all, I dont know why they have the top gun liscense because other than the logo on the box and a quote "Do you feel the need?" are the only things I foind that have to do with the movie itself. Speaking of need for speed.... you wont have an answer to that craving in this game. The jets, especially the F-14 that you start with fly like a propellor powered tri-plane, and handle like one too.
In the mandatory academy missions that you must fly to get to each new stage of the game there is little though put into either the variety or the weaponry you are assigned. In a bombing mission you aren't given enough bombs to finish the job, in a mission where you have to use dumb-fire rockets, you actually have some guided missles as well. All the objectives are more or less the same, kill al the aircraft, kill all the tanks, or kill all the helocopters.
Now that I've brought up the 3 types of enemies you encounter though the game, let's take a look at the AI. The helocopters simply hover over the ground and rotate slowly in attempt to come around and fire on you. Tanks move around a little, and are on the ground, other than that they are helocopters. The planes usually just fly around minding their business at 8,000 feet, happy to ignore you until you come close, and they wont bother to chase you if you choose to run away. Finding the enemy planes is perhaps the biggest hassle. You can see on the map that theres a little red dot right in front of you, but its an arduous task to try to find them. This is party due to the fact that your view is limited. You look straigt ahead, or by using an analog stick you can look 90 degress leftor right, nowhere inbetween, and you cant look above you either.
Next is the storyline. ..... Now that I've covered the storyline, I'll put in my final thought. The game is a sad but common tale of a promising idea that was poorly executed. There's not a whole lot to keep you coming back in terms of replay or even to finish the game save that you're so mad at it you want to beat it because you're so angry at it. My advice, seek out one of the better games in this genre.

BORING! Lacks realism. Underwhelming graphics!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: November 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

A little bias here, as I'm a former pilot. The training missions are guaranteed to leave you droopy-eyed and frustrated. Controls and flight parameters aren't very realistic, especially for Tomcat and Harrier. I was also underwhelmed by the overall graphics; the canyon runs can't hold a candle to canyon runs in Star Wars: Starfighter As an example, terrain features "pop-up" too obviously, making it hard to keep flight situational awareness and really get into the "experience."

This game DEFINITELY does not deliver the "MACH-3 with your hair on fire" experience I expected. Do yourself a favor and rent before dropping full retaill on this slug.

God awful

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 10
Date: November 12, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Coming from an ex pilot, this game gives a high performance jet the manuverability of a Piper Cherokee. I played this game for about 3 minutes, then I was off to EB to trade it in. It might have been a decent game for the Nintendo entertainment system (yes the 8 bit fossil). Save your dough, get a game that is worth it, 'cause this is possibly the worst I've seen yet.

NOT SO GOOD.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: January 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

this game is fun if you like plane games. it has very good planes but the details are not very good. I would not recomend it because it's worst than falcon 4.

Amateurish PS2 Garbage

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: January 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Top Gun: Combat Zones attempts to blend elements of both arcade- and sim-style flyers, resulting in a game which isn't good at either genre. The flight physics are astoundingly unrealistic (someone needs to remind the developer that real aircraft require thrust to generate lift). The HUD graphics are equally silly. Your cannon has regenerating ammo (perhaps the US Navy would be interested in licensing this technology from Titus). Enemy AI is so poor that the only way for them to dumb it down enough for Easy difficulty was to simply prevent enemies from both moving and shooting. The aircraft models are decent, but textures are blurry and washed out, probably as a means of disguising their lack of detail. Environment graphics are even more depressing, revealing numerous clipping errors and texture glitches upon close inspection. Gameplay is often redundant and tedious, but rarely challenging. The music is abysmal, menus are ugly and unintuitive, and in-game sounds range from average to utter garbage. Perhaps this level of incompetence cuts the mustard on the PS2, but it's a real stinker compared to other GameCube games.

don't waste your money

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: August 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Don't waste your money on this game, very hard to control and
progress, mindless mission with lots of frustration.

Bad Bad Game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 9
Date: November 15, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Graphics, gameplay, and options are very poor..I bought this game because I loved ACE Combat 4...Had high hopes but was very disappointed...Avoid! If you want a great fighter sim buy ACE Combat 4..

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