Heroes Over Europe Detailed

13 Jul 2009 at 16:25:07 by James Chalmers

Speaking to IncGamers, Justin Halliday discusses the history of the franchise, the support Ubisoft has given the title and the persistent tweaking taking place behind the scenes to make this one of the best arcade flight games on the market.


This title is a sequel to Heroes of the Pacific on the original Xbox. Have you kept some of the same gameplay elements or have you started from scratch?

We've got a whole new game engine, but Heroes Over Europe retains all of the elements that made Heroes of the Pacific the best dogfighting game on the last generation of consoles: an authentic setting, great action and flying, and thrilling online battles.

The big new changes in Heroes Over Europe are the setting and the gameplay.  The new setting gives us the most stunning cities ever seen in a console flying game: London and Berlin.  We've spent the last few years re-writing our game engine so that it's capable of rendering hugely detailed recreations of these cities, and the results are spectacular.

On e, we'we further ,ndethd$festlts refined our dogfighting experience and we've also added to it with new features like Ace Kill, Energy Attacks, and the tactical Squad Leader Kill.

Ace Kill is the new core feature in the game - basically, if you keep an enemy plane in your sights for long enough you then get the opportunity to take it out with a single shot - you can target its fuel tanks, the engine, the ammo boxes, or even the pilot himself.  If you perfect this you can also chain together Ace Kills to score multiple kills quickly and efficiently.

Energy Attacks are high-speed dive attacks that deal extra damage, you'll need to get these right to tackle the enemy bomber formations later in the game.  Finally, the Squad Leader Kill is a tactical feature where you can shoot down the leader of an enemy squad and it will reduce the effectiveness and flying abilities of the other members of his squad.

We've seen Ubisoft publish flight games such as Blazing Angels and Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. over the last couple of years. Do you feel that having Ubisoft publishing this title will be an advantage for you when it comes to promoting the game?

Yeah, definitely.  Ubisoft have a great history with flying games, like the Blazing Angels series, and they actually published Heroes of the Pacific in the US.

From a developers' point of view, it's fantastic working with Ubisoft. They are as dedicated to making sure the game is great as we are.

What modes will we see in the game? Will we be seeing a story driven main game that follows a pilot through the war or are they separated up into different landmark fights of World War 2?

Heroes Over Europe is split into Campaign and Online game modes.  The Campaign mode follows three different pilots through war, from the early stages of the fighting in the French Alps to attacks on the heart of Berlin.  These pilots, an America, a Brit, and a New Zealander, fly with different squadrons and the campaigns take them to all of the landmark battles of WWII.

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