Wing Commander Arena was released upon the Xbox Live Arcade yesterday, but is it worth your ten bucks? The most touted aspect of this game is the fact that it’s the first Arcade title to feature up to 16 players in a game simultaneously, and due to this focus on multiplayer, it seems the single player suffered. Unless you can play online and enjoy frantic space shooter battles in which your rewards are achievements, unlocked ships, and bragging rights on the Leaderboard, then don‘t bother. But if that is your kind of thing, then this game provides a fun action-packed multiplayer experience not before seen from an Arcade game. More thought could have been put into the single player mode, and it would have been nice to not be forced online for your multiplayer fix, but one mustn’t forget that this is a $10 title and not one that costs sixty bucks. And as far as $10 Arcade titles go, Wing Commander Arena provides more play value than a lot of them do.

Single Player has four modes, one of which is a training mode that lets you play around and hone your skills in a worry free environment, where there is no time or frag limit and are always plenty of enemies to kill. This mode is called Proving Grounds, and is recommended for beginners to familiarize themselves with the controls and power-ups placed about the environment. The other three actually have objectives and give you achievements to unlock:

Melee – This is a basic free-for-all with bots. The time limit is 10 minutes, and as the match gets closer to the end, more and more enemies will appear. Things can get pretty crazy, and is a good showcase of what to expect online, but the bots are chump change and you’ll always find yourself dominating.

Meteor Storm – Your objective in Meteor Storm is to protect Satellites from (you guessed it) meteors, and as you progress, enemy ships too. This mode is done in waves, and more meteors and enemies will appear with each wave making it more difficult. Satellites also have restoration abilities, like refilling your weapons or repairing your hull. You start off protecting one satellite, which is pretty simple, but as you progress you are given more to protect. The game ends when all satellites are destroyed, but if one is destroyed and you complete that wave, it will come back the next wave. If say, two are destroyed and you complete the wave, only one will still come back, and you’ll have to protect both satellites until the next wave to get what you originally lost, as only one satellite can be restored per wave.

Gauntlet – Similar to Meteor Storm (or partially to the Capital Ship multiplayer mode), your goal here is to protect your Capital Ship from waves of enemies. As you go higher in waves, so do the amount of enemies you have to fight. With this mode though, you don’t have satellites floating around where you can get anything restored at will, and instead need to find your restoration items yourself. You only have one life, so it’s best not to stay still too long.

One of the problems with the single player mode is that there is only one map per mode. Every time you play it will be the exact same map, same difficulty, same everything. Besides unlocking ships or being an achievement/leaderboard whore, there isn’t a whole lot of reason to continuously play them after a while. Not when you can pit your skills against human opponents at least. Speaking of unlocking ships, you start out with two for both the Terran and Kilrathi (sides to choose from). Not only can you unlock ships in single player, but you can also do it in multiplayer too, and once unlocking a ship, it becomes available across all modes. Play with the Terran to unlock Terran ships, and play with the Kilrathi to unlock Kilrathi ships. There are 18 ships total, each with their own stats, guns, weapons, and devices. The stats for the ships include Hull Strength, Velocity, Thrust Power, and Turning Radius. The guns (Right and Left Triggers) are rated by Damage, Rate, and Efficiency. Then weapons (LB and RB) have Damage and Capacity, since they are your only tools of destruction that are limited. Your guns on the other hand, are limitless, although they do expend energy that will need to regenerate after a while of constant blasting.

Seeing as there are 18 ships, you have a wide variety to choose from (after logging in some game time and unlocking them that is). Some ships are tiny, but what they lack in size they make up for with speed and maneuverability. Pulling off barrel rolls and doing a 180° can save your ass from being blown up, and the smaller ships can pull these off with ease. Other ships are huge and bulky, but their lack of speed and maneuverability is made up with power and total destruction. Turning is a hassle, and barrel rolls and loops are impossible. You may want to use ships in different situations or modes, and when killed online, you get to select the ship you want and immediately get back into the action without worrying about any pesky respawn times. Different ships will come with different devices and weapons too. Some devices include one that lets you see cloaked enemies on your radar and the playing field, or another that is a tractor beam used to suck your enemies in closer so you can unleash a barrage of attacks ensuring their death. Weapons on the other hand, include homing missiles or mines and learning how to use them properly becomes prudent if ultimate victory is your goal. The fact that your defeated enemies can come back with a completely different ship will keep you on your toes and consistently having to adapt.

Flying is done with the left and right analog sticks, and is done solely on a horizontal plane. So no ascending or descending for you! To make things even easier, you are given the choice of four camera types too. An up-close view with the camera on the tail of the ship, two more distant views, with one being more overhead and the other more behind your ship that lets you see more in front of you, and then another distant view placed in front of the ship, making everything seemingly control backwards.

Once unlocking a few ships and learning the mechanics of the game, you’ll be ready for the online world. Almost all of the modes can have up to 16 players at once, making for some pretty hectic space battles. You’ll be able to test out your skills across five different modes of play:

Capital Ship – In this mode, both teams (Red and Green) have Capital Ships in which they must protect. While doing so, their goal is to also destroy the other team’s Capital Ship first. The two giant ships slowly fly past each other back and forth firing off at one another, while each team’s goal is to destroy the other’s gun turrets, batteries, missiles, and radar on each level until they’re able to destroy the Bridge resulting in victory. You first have access to the lowest level, and after everything is destroyed on that, you move up to the second level. After complete destruction there, you can finally move up the Bridge. The health for each ship is shown at the top left of the screen letting you know whether you’re in the lead or not. This map is a pretty large open one compared to the others, with nothing but the ships to get in your way.

Satellite – There are 12 neutral satellites spread about the level that each team has to capture. Capturing satellites is done by docking at them just as you would to restore your health or weapons. In the top left corner it tells you how many gained, lost, and neutral satellites there are left. This level is the opposite of Capital Ship, and takes place in a space canyon that is filled with lots of tight narrow spaces you have to fly through. It seems to be the least common game type.

Team – Team Deathmatch, and can hold matches of up to 8v8. You can play Team at two different levels, Boneyard and Spaceship. Boneyard is a larger map that has a mix of open and closed areas. Old forgotten ships float around in front of what looks to be a giant fossilized space monster who perished long ago. Crystals are sticking out of its body, and all the power-ups are incidentally in all the tight narrow areas around its corpse. Spaceship is the same map used in Melee, which is a large ring-shaped space station with a small square area in the middle, which tends to become populated quickly and usually results in “I can’t tell who is shooting who!” type battles.

Free-for-All – Every ship for itself! Up to 16 players can participate on the Boneyard and Spaceship maps.

Duel – One versus One. This map takes place in the middle of a crater made by a recently crash-landed asteroid. Lots of sharp rocks are sticking up, which are good for a few brief moments of safety (or crashing into). The map is small, which is good since it can only hold two players.

Bearpit – A variation of Duel. There is an arena in the middle in which two players duel off, and outside of the ring is the queue for the other players. In the queue, players can fly around and fight each other just for fun, or even shoot at the players inside when they can get an opening. If you win in the arena, you stay. If you lose, you go out into the ‘queue’ and the next player lined up gets their chance to be champion. It’s difficult to hold your rank though once you’ve earned it, as you don’t get a chance to heal up before your next opponent comes along eager to steal your title. Inside the arena there are four teleporters that rotate around. You can use these to momentarily dodge your opponent’s attack as you are transported to the opposite side. These teleporters are what the players in the queue can use to shoot you though too. I killed one of the fighters in the arena while I was waiting, making my turn come along a lot faster. If you want to earn an achievement and complete a side challenge while waiting outside, you can pick up a blue power-up in one of the corners which activates the Ring Game. The Ring Game basically gives you a bunch of rings you have to fly through, although you’re given a short amount of time to do so before they dissipate and you have to start over. To earn the achievement titled “Hot Dog” which is worth 20 points, you have to complete the Ring Game on all three difficulties. After completing it the first time, the next time you play will be harder, and then after that even harder. Beating this though will earn you your well-deserved points. Just a personal tip, don’t try and do this if there are a lot of players in the game, as it is extremely frustrating when they keep shooting and killing you, and requesting for them to stop will just result in you being called a “whiny fag”

If you find yourself seeing the ship select screen more often than the playing field (aka being constantly killed), you may want to learn your power-ups. These are placed all over the maps, and give upgrades like doubling your firing rate, making your ship move faster, giving you an impenetrable shield and more. You can also find restoration items floating around that will repair your hull or restore your energy quicker, letting you go back to firing your guns without having to pause and wait for some of your energy to regenerate by itself.

Something else to note is when waiting for enough players to join a game, you can play as you normally would in what is called “Free Play”, but you can’t deal damage nor receive it, although you can fire away until your hearts content. Once enough players join, the host can start the game any time they want, and in a few seconds you’ll be playing. It is much better than waiting with nothing to do but chat with strangers while staring at their gamertag.

The graphics are okay, but textures are muddy (especially noticeable when you use the up-close camera view on the ships) and could’ve used more polish, but they do better when it comes to weaponry and explosions. The game sounds like exactly what you would expect from a space shooter, and there are only a couple of pieces of music used. You can even hear the break in the loop when the song starts over, but the music is the last thing you will be paying attention to while battling it out.

Wing Commander Arena is meant to be an instant pick-up-and-play experience, and that it does well. There are no cinematics, and the only story you will get is when viewing the Help and Options menu. Select your mode, select your ship, and your immediately playing. When starting out, I first thought much less of the game then what I do now. This was due to the fact that not a lot of people had downloaded it yet, and therefore I couldn’t get into any of the hot multiplayer action that was always talked about in press releases. Today after signing onto Live though, more people had it and I had a much easier time of getting into larger scale battles. The games are smooth as can be, and I have had zero lag in all my time of playing it. There are little things which downgrade the experience, like players leaving in the middle of matches when losing, but that happens in every Live game. This has happened to me frequently when doing Player matches, but it’s sort of my fault since I kick so much ass. Over my headset, I could hear that other players shared my same sentiment. They thought less of the game starting out too, but once you play Capital Ship with several players, you start to realize how much fun it can actually be. Those looking to gather the achievements will play it more, as they can range from the incredibly easy like obtaining 15 Frags on Melee, or to the much longer tasks like killing 1,000 opponents on Live. I would say download the demo and try it out, but I don’t believe that it lets you play multiplayer, which is the only reason to bother purchasing this game.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 26th, 2007 at 2:46 pm and is filed under 360 Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.